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A SOLDIER-DOCTOR OF OUR ARMY 
JAMES P. KIMBALL 



A SOLDIER-DOCTOR OF 
OUR ARMY 

JAMES P. KIMBALL 

LATE COLONEL AND 
ASSISTANT SURGEON-GENERAL, U.S. ARMY 

BY 

MARIA BRACE KIMBALL 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM C. GORGAS 

SURGEON-GENERAL, U.S. ARMY 

And tvitb Illustrations 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COiMPANY 

(€bc J\i\JcrjJiDc pre?? (CambriOflC 

1917 



■ K'^f 



Mf 



COPYRIGHT, I917, BY MARIA BRACE KIMBALL 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published March iqiy 



MAR 22 1917 



©GI.A455995 



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PREFACE 

The heroism of the army surgeon has been 
by many people overlooked. Noncombatant 
the surgeon may be in the technical sense of 
the word, but Dr. Kimball's letters from track- 
less plains and mountain-tops, from battle- 
fields, "civilized" and savage, show him ''ever 
a fighter." Ready to attack death or disaster, 
he was indeed a true soldier-doctor. I like 
the name familiar to every man in the ranks, 
"Captain-Doctor," " Major-Doctor,"— hence 
Soldier-Doctor. 

The extracts from my husband's letters and 
journals I have collected, first, for my sons, 
and second, for all who may like to know an 
American officer, — 

"Whose powers shed round him In the common 
strife, 
Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 
A constant influence, a peculiar grace; 
But who, if he be called upon to face 



VI 



PREFACE 



Some awful moment to which Heaven has 

joined 
Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 
Is happy as a lover; and attired 
With sudden brightness, like a man inspired; 
And through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw." 

Maria Brace Kimball 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTORY LETTER FROM WILLIAM 
C. GORGAS, SURGEON-GENERAL, UNITED 

STATES ARMY xi 

I. COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR I 

II. FORT BUFORD THE FRONTIER 27 

III. THE YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 64 

IV. THE BLACK HILLS AND THE BIG HORN 80 
V. THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 92 

VI. TEXAS EUROPE TEXAS IIO 

VII. NEW MEXICO SANTE FE 1 25 

VIII. NEW MEXICO — FORT WINGATE 1 37 

IX. governor's ISLAND — THE WAR WITH 

SPAIN 161 

X. THE END 176 

INDEX 185 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



DR. JAMES P. KIMBALL, UNITED STATES 

ARMY, 1898. Photogravure Frontispiece ' 

From a photograph by Hollinger & Co. 

A CANDIDATE BEFORE THE ARMY MEDICAL 

EXAMINING BOARD 3O ^'^ 

From a drawing 

FORT BUFORD, DAKOTA TERRITORY, IN 1 868 38 ' 

From a drawing 

SITTING BULL 60 ^ 

From a photograph by 0. S. Goff, Bismarck, D.T., 1881 

ZUNIS SELLING POTTERY 76 

SALLY-PORT, BRIDGE, AND MOAT 90 

Fort Columbus (now Fort Jay), Governor's Island 

INSCRIPTION ROCK, NEW MEXICO 110 ^ 

OLDEST HOUSE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1 53 5 1 26 

Near San Miguel Church, Santa Fe 

"hunting-leave" — ^^ SUPPER ON THE 

PLAINS 128 ^ 



CHILDREN OF ACOMA, N.M. I3O" 

THE GOVERNOR AND HIS " STAFF," ACOMA I30' 

CHURCH AT ACOMA, BUILT IN 1710 I32 ' 



^ 



X ILLUSTRATIONS 

" NAVAJO CHURCH," ROCK FORMATION NEAR 

FORT WINGATE, N.M. I32 

officers' row in winter, fort WINGATE, 

N.M. 138 ' 

"boots and saddles," camp on RIO SAN 

JUAN, N.M. 144^ 

A WATER-CARRIER AT ZUNI I48 "" 

A NAVAJO WOMAN AT HER LOOM I48" 

CROSSING RIO SAN JUAN, N.M. 154^' 

found! private JENSEN AFTER HIS ^ 

RESCUE 158' 

THE HARBOR FROM CASTLE WILLIAM 162 ^ 

LITTER DRILL, GOVERNOR'S ISLAND ^ 162 ^ 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER 

FROM SURGEON-GENERAL GORGAS 

War Department, 

Office of the Surgeon-General, 

Washington, D.C., 

January 29, 1917. 

Mrs. James P. Kimball, 

Washington, D.C, 
Dear Mrs. Kimball: — 

I have looked over, with a great deal of in- 
terest, the manuscript you sent me dealing 
with the life of Doctor Kimball. It gives an 
excellent picture of the life of an Army Medical 
Officer, as lived on the frontier, when I first 
entered the service. As the frontier no longer 
exists, it is well to look back upon the making 
of the present West, which has been accom- 
plished largely since the close of the Civil War. 
During these fifty years, Indians have been con- 
quered, railroads constructed, cities built, and 
Territories have become States. Medicine and 
surgery have also advanced greatly through- 



xii INTRODUCTORY LETTER 

out this period. Serums, antitoxins, asepsis, 
trained nursing, specialism in medicine were 
practically unknown on the frontier. The Army 
Medical Officer on the plains was obliged to 
combine the duties of surgeon, oculist, aurist, 
dentist, obstetrician, general practitioner, with 
scanty help in nursing from the enlisted men 
of the Hospital Corps to whom he, himself, 
had taught "First Aid." He was also general 
health officer of the garrison ; was compelled 
to study and inspect water supply, to plant 
and irrigate post gardens, and sometimes to 
manufacture ice. In addition, he often had a 
large free clinic among Indian neighbors, trad- 
ers, and ranchmen. Yet this busy man, who 
happened to be interested also in ethnology, 
botany, geology, or biology, did not fail to 
make use of his rare opportunities for study. 
Our museums and libraries have been enriched 
by collections and monographs made by Army 
Surgeons. 

To-day, well equipped Army Hospitals, 
with their corps of Red Cross nurses and 
specialists, are in marked contrast to those we 
used to know. 

In this slow and difficult evolution, Doctor 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER xiii 

Kimball did his part ably, as is shown in the 
sketch of his career. It is a human document 
worthy of record and remembrance. 

1 am much obliged for the reading of the 
book. With kindest regards, I remain 
Yours very sincerely, 



« 



A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 
OF OUR ARMY 

I 

COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 

Home and college — Assistant Surgeon, U.S. Volunteers, 
Army of the Potomac — First battle, Hatcher's Run — 
Lee's surrender. 

The Kimballs were a sturdy race, and brought 
their loyahy to religion and country to the 
new land. Richard and Ursula, with two chil- 
dren, sailed in the ship Elizabeth for Boston 
in 1634. "Fortis non Ferox" reads the coat 
of arms of the Kimballs ; and in the midst of 
savage Indians and a savage climate they had 
need of Fortis, and perhaps a little of Ferox, 
too. Our first American ancestor's farm lay 
in a part of Cambridge (Watertown), and a 
corner of Richard Kimball's cornfields was 
not far from Harvard College. It is not sur- 
prising, then, that one Benjamin Kimball was 



2 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

graduated in the Harvard class of 1753, and 
that many others followed him. John Kim- 
ball, father of James, was born in Connecticut, 
and thence he migrated to southwestern New 
York. There Ruth Ellis became his wife. In 
her ancestry another strain — the Welsh — 
was added to the English stock. 

In this new land, with new necessities, our 
English ancestors, who brought their trades 
with them, often added other occupations to 
their handicrafts, and became soldiers, diplo- 
mats, teachers, statesmen. This was true of 
many Kimballs. John Kimball, while he used 
his trade, increased his acres, taught school, 
and collected a library. So, though living on 
a farm in New — very new — York, his son 
James and two sisters grew up in a book- 
reading and book-loving family. 

Both Ellises and Kimballs were always 
"good fighters," from the days when John 
Kimball, of Ipswich, responded promptly to 
Paul Revere's cry. Their names are found in 
records of the Revolution, of the War of 181 2, 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 3 

of the Civil War, and of the war with Spain. 
Major Peleg Ellis, of Ellis Hollow, was a hero 
of the neighborhood, and his tales of the War 
of 1812 made a deep impression upon his lis- 
tening grandson, James Peleg Kimball. This 
Bible name, Peleg, was a part of his inheritance 
from his grandfather Ellis, together with clear- 
cut features and an ardent temperament. The 
name was his only objection to his grandfather; 
and, while he wrote it "Peleg" in early war 
records in later life he changed the "P" into 
another family "P" — Patterson. 

James Kimball was born in Berkshire, New 
York, August 21, 1840. He grew up with two 
sisters, Olive and Grace, one older and one 
younger. The older sister, who was his play- 
mate, gives a pretty picture of their outdoor 
life together on the farm. It is a placid, roll- 
ing country, this rich farmland of southern 
New York, with blue hills, woods, and fields 
in the distance; nearer, are the apple trees 
bending down to the kitchen garden, and be- 
yond, the "Gulf." This awful chasm has been 



4 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

photographed, and seems just a quiet water- 
course descending gently through the glades. 
But in that dark "gulf" the brother and 
sister built stone houses "tall enough to stand 
up in," and there they dreamed of Indians and 
bears. The hillocks were Indian graves, and 
uprooted trees were bears' dens. One special 
bear, half pet and half monster, was named 
" Tige." To him they offered propitiatory meals 
of nuts and apples, and as the food always 
disappeared between one visit and the next, 
they felt sure that "Tige" had come true. 
They never thought of this unknown wood-lord 
as anything so humdrum as woodchuck or 
squirrel. Their greatest discoveries were a 
partridge's nest, or the first spring flower. 

*' Happy hearts and happy faces, 
Happy play in grassy places." 

How soon the boy was to leave his play- 
ground and follow in the train of "pain and 
fear and bloodshed " ! 

Not far below the "Gulf" and the orchard 
stood the district schoolhouse. There young 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 5 

James and his sisters began their education. 
The boy's taste for books developed at the 
same time with his love of outdoor life and 
adventure. Throughout his life in his stations 
on the plains or in the cities, in war and in 
peace, he was reader, hunter, and naturalist. 
A pocket edition of Pope's Iliad he always took 
with him on long marches or campaigns. So it 
came about that as a boy he was sent first to a 
near-by academy at Ithaca, and then to Ham- 
ilton College. The family, strong in New Eng- 
land traditions, devoutly hoped that their only 
son would enter the ministry. It was the year 
1 86 1. The children of to-day cannot know 
what the date meant to the young men of that 
generation. War is a horror, and alas! not ob- 
solete: to-day Kaiser, King, and Czar tell us 
that it is war that teaches men to ** speak plain 
the word country." In 1861 the country 
needed surgeons, therefore medicine was the 
only profession to be considered. So reasoned 
the young Freshman at Hamilton College. 
But how to hurry through the four academic 



6 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

years, get in a medical course, and not lose a 
chance of a battlefield ? That was the problem 
and it was ably worked out. Read this letter, 
written to one of his sisters, from James Kim- 
ball, Sophomore : — 

Hamilton College, 
Clinton, N.Y., October i, 1862. 

College is a very different place from what it 
was last year. Nearly, or quite, one third of 
the students who were here have gone to war. 
But the boys all like it, and those at the seat 
of war say they have no desire to be back at 
college. 

The letter ends: — 

I am glad, indeed, that I am to leave to 
teach next year, as college honors have but 
little attraction for me in this lonesome place. 
Should n't be surprised if owls and bats should 
hold their carnivals in these classic halls at 
the beginning of another year. I don't know 
but we shall all go yet. 

In the same letter he speaks of his decision 
to study medicine, with the intention of en- 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 7 

taring the army as soon as possible, either as 
Hospital Steward or Assistant Surgeon. This 
determined young student actually carried on 
simultaneously college work, medical studies, 
and teaching. In 1864 he secured his degree 
as Doctor of Medicine at Albany Medical Col- 
lege, with his Bachelor of Arts at Hamilton, in 
1865, in absentia. 

In response to a toast, "The Army," Dr. 
Kimball in 1897 made the following reference 
to his early history. He was speaking before 
the New York Alumni Association of Albany 
Medical College : — 

"But for the Army — the soldier *in the 
air,' so to speak, in a time of war, I should 
probably not have had the good fortune to 
be an alumnus of the Albany Medical College ; 
and but for the Albany Medical College, I 
should probably not have followed the career 
of the soldier. I was a student in the Medical 
Department of New York University, and ex- 
pected to obtain my degree in that institution 
and enter the medical service of the Union 



8 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

Army. But after the victories of the summer 
of 1864 I began to fear that the war would be 
over before I should be ready to share in it. 
At the University I could not get the re- 
quisite M.D. until March, 1865. But I found 
that up at Albany was a medical college whose 
degree would answer just as well, and that here 
the session closed in December, 1864. So it 
came about that one December day I became 
a doctor of medicine, and the next day a sur- 
geon in the 121st New York Volunteers, then 
serving in the Army of the Potomac, — where 
I arrived in time to be present at Lee's sur- 
render." 

This work, though done quickly, was not 
slightingly or easily done. James Kimball had 
learned the lessons of industry and economy 
at home; he himself earned a large share of 
the money for his education by teaching in 
vacations. College life in those days, too, es- 
pecially in the little community at Hamilton, 
was simple — meager and narrow, the boys 
of to-day might call it. We do not hear of 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 9 

"Junior Proms/' glee and banjo clubs, drama- 
tic associations, nor much of athletics. Toiling 
up and down the snowy hills of Clinton was an 
athletic feat in itself. But if college luxuries 
did not exist, the necessities did; there were 
scholars at Hamilton in the faculty and among 
the students too. Of the scholars no one was 
more loved and honored than Professor Edward 
North — "Old Greek," as he was affectionately 
called. For fifty years he was professor of 
classics at Hamilton, and it was he, perhaps, 
more than anyone else, who succeeded in keep- 
ing those boys of '61 on their seats when the 
alarums of war sounded outside their class- 
room doors. His son's biography of Edward 
North, "An Old-Time Professor in an Old- 
Fashioned College," shows how rare scholar- 
ship grown in a noble nature can stir the en- 
thusiasm and devotion of students for Greece, 
for the Greek language, and for the teacher of 
Greek. Thirty years afterwards, when my hus- 
band walked up the hill of the Acropolis at 
Athens and stood under the shadow of the 



lo A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

great temples, the light in his eyes, the glow 
in his face, proved his lasting enthusiasm for 
Greece and for this teacher. 

In the medical schools, as well as in the col- 
leges, there was a constant clamor for service 
on the firing line. A glance at Brady's photo- 
graphs of fifty years ago shows that camps and 
battle-fields were filled with boy generals, boy 
sergeants, boy surgeons. To meet this demand 
of medical students for service, a special corps 
called "Medical Cadets" was created. This 
corps, by the way, contained several young 
surgeons who have since won name and honor 
the world over. 

In July, 1864, Dr. Kimball was admitted to 
the Cadets, and ordered to McDougall Hos- 
pital, at Fort Schuyler (Throg's Neck), New 
York. The hospital contained about one 
thousand patients, and the sick and wounded 
were constantly arriving by transports from 
the front. Into this huge unknown world of 
suffering and death went the country boy, 
fresh from his classrooms. Already he had 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR ii 

something of the true surgeon's self-control 
and alertness, with a boy's interest in every- 
thing new. He writes home of his salary, his 
rations, his negro servant, and tells of his 
duties — the dressing of minor wounds, and 
keeping the register of the ward. "The sick 
and wounded," he writes, "bear their misfor- 
tunes bravely — don't make as much fuss at 
having a leg or arm amputated as I have seen 
in civil life at the drawing of a tooth." The 
last thing at night, the young officer, with an 
assistant, visited the "dead house." Lantern 
in hand, they passed up and down the rows of 
silent sleepers. Once, as they were about to 
lock the door, they heard a low moan ; just in 
time they turned to save the life of a man 
who had been left as dead among the dead. 

After several months' service at Fort 
Schuyler, the young soldier-surgeon obtained 
his heart's desire, and received his commission 
as Assistant Surgeon in the I2ist New York 
Volunteers. He arrived at General Meade's 
headquarters, Army of the Potomac, at City 



12 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

Point, in January, 1865. "My regiment," — 
proud word! — he writes to his father, "is 
in the extreme front, about two and a half 
miles from Petersburg. The breastworks are 
not over forty rods from us, and the picket 
firing is very distinct, the line being about half 
a mile in advance of the breastworks." Then, 
to relieve his father's anxiety, he changes the 
subject: "I was very cordially received at 
headquarters, and had a tip-top supper of 
baked potatoes, pan-cakes, and mackerel." To 
add to the good supper was a good horse — 
always a welcome friend — and a ride about 
the camp. 

The glamour of war, however, soon wears 
off for the new recruit ; for he learns that war 
does not mean fighting a battle every day, but 
that waiting — sleeping, eating, drilling, often 
under great hardship — makes half the battle. 
So the next letter is written, somewhat wist- 
fully, "To the dear ones at home." "Our 
camp is pitched on rather wet ground, which 
is, or rather was, covered with woods of pitch 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 13 

pine. These are all cut off where our camp 
stands, and are fast disappearing all around 
us for firewood. It does n't make very good 
wood to burn, but then we have plenty of it. 
Our grounds have been drained and the stumps 
cut close to the soil, so that we have a very 
good parade-ground, smooth and quite dry. 
Not far away runs Grant's military railroad, 
which is rather a curiosity, as it is not graded, 
but runs up and down little elevations, like 
a common carriage road. They make good 
time on the road, however, and if you don't 
object to now and then pitching into your own 
next-door neighbor, or having him pitch into 
you, it is good riding." The postscript to this 
letter is more significant: "Feb. i, 1865. We 
have orders to pack up, and be ready to move 
at a moment's notice — no one knows where." 
He adds that he had been left as Surgeon in 
charge of the regiment, with plenty to do. He 
never forgets to mention his good horse, then 
the five servants, and lastly himself — "Am 
well, and growing fat." The young surgeon 



14 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

was proud of his "veteran" regiment, a vete- 
ran three years old ; for a regiment ages fast on 
the battle-field. The idol of the command was 
the Sixth Corps. Grant's dry comment after 
the battle of Cedar Creek, "Sheridan was a 
lucky man to have had the Sixth Corps with 
him that day," became the theme of a song. 
In the camp-fire jingles, Sheridan thus 
speaks : — 

**Come up with me, you Nineteenth, Eighth, 
Come up with me, I say. 
Why do you lag so far behind? 
We have not lost the day — 
Come up upon that crest of hill. 
You'll see a glorious sight; 
You won't get hurt; you need not fire, 
But see that Sixth Corps fight!" 

I have often heard my husband sing these 
lines long afterwards as he buckled on ac- 
couterments for a day's march across the 
mesas of New Mexico. 

Ten days later, the Sixth Corps once more 
went into action, in the battle of Hatcher's 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 15 

Run, and here all the corps did their part 
nobly. As this was the surgeon's first battle, 
he wrote of it very carefully to his mother, and 
the anniversary of that day he always "kept," 
not as a noisy holiday but as a solemn, sacred 
memory : — 

Before Petersburg. 

Dear Mother: — When I wrote to you 
last, we were under marching orders, but did 
not move until about nine o'clock last Sunday 
evening. We then marched silently out of 
camp, leaving our drum corps behind to beat 
the various calls, that the "Rebs" might not 
miss us. About midnight we halted, formed in 
line of battle, and lay down to sleep, with 
nothing above us save the clear sky, through 
which the moon shone brightly and the "stars 
of heaven were looking kindly down." We did 
not move from this place until four p.m. of the 
next day, Monday. We marched then across 
Hatcher's Run, and about five o'clock came 
into an open field fifty rods in width, on one 
side of which were the Rebels, in the woods, 
behind entrenchments. We formed in line 
of battle as a reserve, and the Fifth Corps 



i6 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

charged on the enemy. But the "Rebs" were 
too much for them, cutting them up terribly, 
and causing them to break and fall back in 
terrible confusion. The "Johnnies" — Con- 
federates — charged, not on the skedaddlers, 
as they supposed, but on the unbroken first 
division of the Sixth Corps, who sent them 
back behind their breastworks, on the double- 
quick. Up to this time I, in company with the 
other surgeons of the Brigade, had been idle but 
interested spectators of the scene. Now the 
wounded began to be brought back, and we 
had business, plenty. We merely applied tem- 
porary dressings, arresting hemorrhages, etc., 
saw them put into ambulances and sent to the 
rear. There we confiscated a large white house 
in a beautiful grove of pine trees, put the occu- 
pants, an old gentleman, a middle-aged lady, 
two girls, and a boy, into one room, and of the 
rest made a hospital. The parlor we took for 
an operating-room, and there, where once, I 
suppose, promenaded the "flower and chiv- 
alry" of the "Old Dominion," now ran streams 
of human blood, and instead of the merry 
laugh of Southern beaux and belles, now were 
heard only the groans of our brave soldiers. 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 17 

The counterpart of this incident is one often 
spoken of by my husband : after an exhausting 
night of work over the wounded, a party of 
surgeons was riding hastily forward to over- 
take the division. As they rode through the 
darkness, almost reeling from the saddle with 
sleep, the mistress of a beautiful Virginia man- 
sion stopped the party, and begged the officers 
to come in and care for the wounded. These 
were our brothers, the enemy, and here the 
wearied Northern doctors performed their 
services in the true spirit of knight and doc- 
tor ; services received by these wounded men 
with the Southern courtesy and gratitude, 
unfailing even in their hour of agony. 

This first stage of "Hatcher's Run" was 
followed by a night under arms, when our 
troops had fallen back behind the outer line of 
breastworks. **I spread my rubber blanket on 
the ground," writes the surgeon, "put my case 
of instruments under my head for a pillow, had 
another blanket thrown over me, and went to 
sleep with cap, overcoat, boots and spurs on. 



i8 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

and an orderly standing near holding my horse, 
ready for action at a moment's notice." It 
was into this sleep that came dreams, not of 
bugle-calls and bloody duty, but of the pretty 
excitement of squirrel-shooting at home on the 
farm ; distinctly he heard the patter of shots 
on the dry autumn leaves, I have heard my 
husband say, but he awoke to find that the 
" shots " were the shells of the enemy " screech- 
ing noways musically" over his head. 

"At five A.M. Tuesday," continues the let- 
ter, "I crawled out from under my blanket, 
which was covered with half an inch or more 
of frozen rain and snow, took my coffee, hard 
tack, and pork, and again fell into position. 
As the day advanced, it snowed and hailed, and 
finally rained hard, almost freezing, but not 
quite, making it awful overhead, underfoot, 
and all around. All day long I sat in the saddle, 
wet through and through, watching and wait- 
ing" — a large part of every campaign — 
" and occasionally giving a pass to a sick man, 
not, however, if he was able to stand up and 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 19 

hold a musket, or I should have excused my 
whole regiment. At length, at four p.m., the 
bugle sounded, and we moved. Everybody was 
desperate, and the *Rebs' must have felt it, for 
they fell back with very little resistance, leav- 
ing us masters of the ground. We accomplished 
what we came out for, viz: to extend our lines, 
thus taking more of Lee's army to front us, 
and so prevent him from sending reinforce- 
ments against Sherman. The enemy fired so 
high, that but little damage was done us. The 
Second and Fifth Corps suffered most. Our 
officers say they never endured greater hard- 
ships.'' "Peace," he adds, "seems to be 
played out for the present. The North must 
come down with her men and force a peace, if 
she wants one. ... I am as well contented, 
for what I know, as though sleeping on down 
— and faring sumptuously every day. Am 
glad to have a *hand' in this struggle for 
freedom." 

After "Hatcher's Run" came the monot- 
ony and suspense of camp life again. Reports 



20 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

consume a large part of the surgeon's time, 
and red tape methods prevail, even in camp. 
The daily " sick call " brings out many instances 
of heroism, no less in the hospital ward than in 
the field. Thus: "I have lost but one patient 
since being here, and he was brought in mor- 
tally wounded. He was shot accidentally, while 
returning to camp from picket duty Sunday 
morning." (The waste of war ! Probably shot 
by one of his own comrades.) "I amputated 
his arm and dressed his other wounds, and kept 
him alive on brandy until yesterday morn- 
ing. He was a Pennsylvanian named Car- 
penter, only twenty years old" — Surgeon 
Kimball was then twenty-five years old — " and 
as intelligent and bright a lad as I have seen 
in a long time. Could have lost half the men in 
my ward with less regret than I did him." 

He writes, too, of the enemy and their 
maneuvers: **Our lines and theirs are so close 
that very little can be done on either side 
without the knowledge of the other. A day or 
two since, when we were out on a review, the 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 21 

Rebels massed troops opposite us, evidently 
thinking we were about to attack them." 

Apropos of these reviews, he writes : " I am 
obhged to have a sword to wear during the 
coming reviews, but I am in hopes the mud 
will cause them to be put off until after pay- 
day, and so am not going to be in a hurry to 
purchase." 

Again, still near Petersburg: "The First 
Division, Sixth Corps, was reviewed yesterday 
by General Grant, Admiral Porter, and other 
distinguished generals, who complimented the 
Division in the highest terms for their soldierly 
bearing, etc. It was amusing to see Admiral 
Porter in the saddle; for, although he rode a 
horse that seemed to possess the least amount 
of life consistent with breathing, he rolled in 
the saddle as though he was in a gale of wind 
on an ironclad." 

The doctor writes, too, of visits from sev- 
eral college friends. The Adjutant's clerk was 
a member of his class at Hamilton, and in 
general the society of the camp before Peters- 



22 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

burg was excellent. The outdoor life of the 
early Virginia spring they found agreeable. 
Yet the devastation of war had touched the 
fields: "Grass is growing (March 22, '65) 
wherever there is any chance for it to grow, as 
all of this country that I have seen is tramped 
and trodden as bare as any highway." 

But these idle March days were big with 
destiny, for the end was approaching. The 
next letter was written on coarse brown pa- 
per, in fading pencil lines. I copy it, from 
the address on the rude envelope, to the sig- 
nature : — 

To John F. Kimball, Esq. 

Head-Quarters, First Division, Sixth Corps. 

Near Appomattox Court House, Va. 

Twenty-five miles from Lynchburg. 

April 10, 1865. 
Dear Father, 

Lee has surrendered, and the War is over. 
The Army is crazy, and we are having Fourth 
of July on a grand scale. The Sixth Corps has 
done most of the fighting in this short and final 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 23 

campaign. We have had forced marches, and 
hard fighting since we left Petersburg, and are 
nearly tired out. Are going to rest now. 

I don't know what will be done with the 
Army now. Will write again soon. This is 
Rebel paper and envelopes. Hope to be with 
you before a great while. 

Very truly your son, 

James P. Kimball. 

So ends this great chapter in Dr. KimbalFs 
life — in one way the most significant half- 
year of his life. The march northward, the 
mustering out of the valiant 121st New York, 
and the transfer to the 65 th New York, are 
like the fifth act of a tragedy. 

A letter dated April 28, 1865, is written 
from Danville, Virginia, where the Sixth 
Corps and Sheridan's Cavalry were encamped 
after a smiling march through magnificent 
"wheat-fields, corn, roses in blossom, and 
darkies in abundance. I asked an old woman 
what she thought of the Yanks, and she said, 
'Lor bress you, I'se so glad you's come. I 



24 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

b'longs to myself now, I reckon.' And they 
are all of the same opinion." Another bit of 
local color occurs in the picture of an old 
planter, whose house and gardens had become 
Sheridan's headquarters. "The grounds are 
beautiful," writes the young conqueror; "flow- 
ers in profusion, graveled walks, and oak and 
maple shade trees, girls and a piano in the 
house, good stables, and plenty of forage for 
our horses. I don't know how long we shall 
stay here — long enough, I hope, to eat him 
out and make him realize there is war in the 
land." These young officers could not forget 
that this rich planter was the first man to 
raise the Confederate flag in Danville, and 
they did not waste an opportunity to "eat 
him out "when invited. "We are in sight of 
the hills of North Carolina, and if Johnston 
does not surrender when he hears how close 
the Sixth Corps are to him, we shall press the 
acquaintance more closely. Later, three p.m. 
Have just had a 'right smart' dinner with the 
old secesh and family. The first time I have 



COLLEGE AND CIVIL WAR 25 

sat down to a table since the 14th of January- 
last. For dinner had ham boiled and ham 
fried, greens of some kind, new potatoes, new 
onions, lettuce, radishes, roast turkey, hoe- 
cake, hot rolls, pickles, etc., with wine and 
cigars to wind up with. The Colonel, Chap- 
Iain, Adjutant, and myself were the guests, and 
we ate as only men can eat who live in the open 
air, exercise freely, and seldom have more than 
two dishes at a meal." He adds: "The young 
ladies were very affable — played the piano, 
lent me a volume of poems to read this after- 
noon, and were on the. whole, quite entertain- 
ing." Who knows what might have happened 
if Johnston had delayed his surrender ! But 
the letter continues an hour later: "Four 
P.M. We have just received official news of 
Johnston's surrender. Cannon are firing, bands 
playing, men cheering, and everything sounds 
as though the 'day of jubilee had come.' The 
old gentleman has gone down to head- 
quarters to take the oath of allegiance. He 
has five large plantations and two hundred 



26 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

negroes." An eventful day for host and 
guests ! 

June, 1865, chronicles the mustering out of 
the 1 21 St New York and the surgeon's trans- 
fer to the 65th New York Volunteers. Al- 
though this appointment delayed his return 
home, he thought it best to accept the nomina- 
tion to a vacancy and to the service of peace. 
He says frankly, too, that he would rather 
spend the summer in a tent here than in a 
house anywhere. While stationed at Wash- 
ington he finds his official duties very light 
and rides ten or fifteen miles a day with great 
pleasure. 

If Dr. Kimball had lived to write this bit 
of personal history, doubtless he could have 
filled in many details of these last days of the 
Army of the Potomac. Of the grand review at 
Washington I have heard him speak. And 
when, on one occasion, a little company was 
comparing notes upon the greatest man each 
had ever seen, he said quietly, "I have seen 
Lincoln." 



II 

FORT BUFORD THE FRONTIER 

Adventures in California, 1865 — Stage-coach robbery 
— Earthquake — Surgeon, U.S. Army — Ordered to Fort 
Buford, Dakota Territory — The journey — Indians hostile 
and friendly — Sitting Bull — An Indian raid. 

After being mustered out of the Volunteer 
Army (65th New York), Dr. Kimball spent 
a wander-year with an old friend, also a 
young physician. They set out for the Pacific 
Coast — not to search for gold directly, but to 
see the wild life of the mining towns and to 
find a paying medical practice. 

They sailed to Aspinwall and stayed long 
enough on the Isthmus of Panama to study 
the then ever-present Chagres Fever. Thence 
up the Mexican Coast, touching at Acapulco 
and tasting the first delights of travel in a 
foreign land. Thus they arrived in San Fran- 
cisco — twenty-three and a half days from 
New York. Then another twenty-four hours 



28 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

over the Sierras by stage to Carson City, 
Nevada. 

Carson City was already in a decline and 
prospectors had betaken themselves to the 
newer and richer silver leads at Virginia City. 
There the young doctors established them- 
selves, rather dazzled by large fees, but doubt- 
ful whether riches, after all, could make up for 
life in a desert and in mining camps. The 
friend was of a delicate constitution and the 
altitude (6500 feet) proved too much for him, 
so that in less than two months they found 
themselves back in New York. Meantime 
they had their fill of adventure; they had 
undergone a stage-coach robbery, a financial 
panic, an earthquake, and all but shipwreck ! 
The traveler writes to his mother: "The ship 
we came back on had over a thousand pas- 
sengers, whereas when we went out there were 
about four hundred. . . . We had a terrible 
voyage — never expected to be here on dry 
land a few days ago, when we lay helpless in 
the trough of the sea ; our engines broke down. 



FORT BUFORD 29 

the ship sprang a leak and only the hand- 
pumps could be worked ; we vv^ere on an al- 
lowance of two hard biscuits a day. I shall 
observe Thanksgiving Day with a thankful 
heart this year, for no less than ten times have 
I escaped unharmed from what seemed threat- 
ening certain death/' 

Then came the question where to settle, or 
whether to settle at all. An opening offered in 
a small town near Syracuse, New York (Pom- 
pey), and there Dr. Kimball seriously tried to 
become a country doctor. In less than two 
years, however, he writes to his mother that he 
has attained the "height of his ambition for 
the present — the honorable position of an 
officer in the United States Army." This posi- 
tion he held for thirty-five years — until al- 
most the day of his death. The unbroken 
routine of a country practice, the frequent 
encounter with "quacks," together with "the 
icy blasts on Pompey's hills" — all strength- 
ened his determination to go back to the Army. 
So he "worked hard and said nothing," stole 



30 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

down to New York, and passed the examina- 
tion for a surgeon's certificate. And what an 
ordeal! Here is the letter telling about it 
(March, 1867): "The examination lasted a 
week ; there were six candidates and I was the 
only one that passed ! You can imagine it was 
something of an examination, as we were 
examined in Latin, Greek, French, and Ger- 
man ; Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Trigo- 
nometry, and Calculus, Geography, political 
and physical. Ancient and Modern History and 
Literature, Mineralogy, Conchology, Botany^ 
and Natural Physics, etc., and then a most 
exhaustive examination in Medicine and all 
its branches." What do you think of unload- 
ing upon paper in one short week the substance 
of your whole education — you pampered 
college boys of to-day ? 

In later years, when Dr. Kimball himself 
sat upon a Board and in turn helped to torture 
his victims, he enjoyed with his fellow surgeons 
some amusing episodes. The accompanying 
sketch, made by a brother officer, suggests 




< 

X 

w 

< 

CJ 

Q 



< 

I! 
H 

W 

O 
fa 

w 

M 



FORT BUFORD 31 

what the young man went through, less the 
tears of the candidate. 

The army surgeon's first station was Fort 
Delaware, Delaware. There, in May, 1867, 
he found himself Surgeon in charge, — "a 
pleasant station, with just enough to do to 
make it agreeable and leave plenty of time to 
read and study" The element of the unex- 
pected is part of the fascination of the young 
soldier's or sailor's life. That he was not bound 
for years to this island in Chesapeake Bay, 
that there were whispers of the border, the 
unknown, the wilderness, in store for him, 
made him contented with his post. ; 

Meantime, he employed the leisure of hos- 
pital attendants and convalescents in garden- 
ing. "Am turning my attention to that busi- 
ness I used to be so determined to dislike — 
farming." He really learned to love his gar- 
den, and for many years, as he went from post 
to post, he added to his regular duties those 
of "chief gardener." The annals of the post 
garden would bring out a pretty phase of gar- 



32 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

rison life. I remember well the plot at Fort 
Wingate, New Mexico, where by irrigation and 
careful planting the desert was made to blos- 
som, in sweet peas as well as cabbages and 
kohlrabi, dear to the sauerkraut barrel of 
the enlisted man. So to utilize the otherwise 
wasted energy of the unoccupied soldier was 
good hygiene, and quite abreast of modern 
ideas. 

Orders for Fort Buford, Dakota, on the 
Upper Missouri, were not long delayed, and 
the journey began in July of the same year, 
1867. The journey across the continent in 
those days was a test of the tenderfoot's grit. 
However, the school of the Army of the 
Potomac proved good training, and the young 
army surgeon gloried in every difficulty. A 
railroad accident, combined with freshets in 
the Missouri, caused him to miss the boat from 
St. Louis, at Council Bluffs, Iowa. The jour- 
ney from St. Louis to Fort Buford by boat took 
a month, on account of the strong current of 
the Missouri — the return trip with the cur- 



FORT BUFORD 33 

rent occupied from seven to nine days, only. 
The young surgeon found himself in company 
with Major Howell, U.S.A., who was bound for 
Fort Benton, Montana, five hundred miles 
beyond Fort Buford. Together they con- 
trived a plan to stage across the country and 
meet the boat at Sioux City — the stage jour- 
ney being one hundred miles, the river route 
two hundred and eighty. All went well at 
first with relays of horses every fifteen miles, 
until they reached the river bottom, which 
was overflowed, with the water still rising. 
The driver at first refused to go on, but " ten 
dollars tempted him and we struck out to 
cross a place five miles wide, with the water 
in many places coming into the stage." The 
horses mired, the stage stuck fast, and Sur- 
geon and Major were left to compose jingles 
and sing away the swarms of mosquitoes, 
while the driver went back to the station for 
fresh horses. Soon after a second start came 
another pause ; the driver declared that he had 
lost the way! Still the plucky travelers were 



34 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

undaunted — they consulted the stars and 
moved on, until the horses went down in a 
ditch. "The Major and myself," writes 
Surgeon Kimball, in a letter to his mother, 
"then stripped to the work and went in; got 
our horses out and by means of a chain 
hitched to the wagon pole, pulled it over. 
We then went ahead with a light, feeling the 
ground with our toes, and when we found 
eight or ten rods of good ground, held up our 
light and the driver came on. Notwithstanding 
our precautions, the horses went down five 
or six times, but finally we conquered and 
reached dry land about half-past three in the 
morning, just as the gray dawn began to 
break in the east, having been seven hours in 
the water, making five miles." This was the 
morning of July Fourth, and the day was not 
forgotten by the two servants of their country. 
"We wrung some of the water out of our 
clothes, fired a salute from our revolvers in 
honor of the Fourth of July, and moved on." 
The two adventurers at last fell upon good 



FORT BUFORD 3^5 

times; they might have been Launcelots or 
Galahads riding through some Old-World for- 
est but for the background of our Far West. 
"At noon/' says the letter, "as we passed 
through a cottonwood grove we found a picnic 
party assembled from various ranches; they 
invited us to dine with them on cold turkey, 
cake, etc., so that we had a Fourth of July din- 
ner according to regulations!" At Sioux City 
they arrived at four o'clock and found them- 
selves comfortably lodged in a hotel looking 
over the city — "the prettiest and neatest 
and most civil Western town I know of." 
Wonders continued, for the disaster was turned 
into a blessing. "The boat we missed lies forty 
miles down the river, a complete wreck, hav- 
ing run into a snag and stove a hole in her. 
Should probably have lost our baggage and 
perhaps been injured if we had been aboard." 
At Sioux City Dr. Kimball and the Major 
waited ten days for another boat and amused 
themselves in the mean time with hunting and 
fishing. The young enthusiast writes to his 



36 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

anxious mother — "I would n't exchange this 
free, breezy, adventurous Hfe for the most 
luxurious idleness. '' And this spirit of youth 
Dr. Kimball never lost. 

The journey through the Western country 
was one long delight. The windings of the Mis- 
souri presented every variety of scenery: the 
bleak and barren Black Hills and Big Horn 
Mountains — known then only to the Indians 
— the dry sagebrush-covered plains and occa- 
sional rich river bottoms, showing the possi- 
bilities of the soil when subjected to irrigation. 
Glimpses of savage Indians along the shores, 
of antelopes and herds of buffalo on the hills, 
made the progress as enticing to the lover of 
outdoors as Colonel Roosevelt's railroad trips 
through the African hunting fields. Probably 
fewer settlements and settlers were to be seen 
from the armored decks of the steamboat 
Miner on the Missouri in 1867 than are to be 
seen to-day in East Africa or in the Valley of 
the Amazon. 

At last, in August, 1867, the party reached 



FORT BUFORD 37 

Fort Buford, in the "land of the Dacotahs." 
As Fort Buford was a type of all the early 
Western forts, now mostly abandoned, I copy 
Dr. Kimball's own account of its history, and 
the life there. Like all our frontier forts Bu- 
ford was surrounded by a wooden stockade 
only, which enclosed the adobe structures; 
on one side of the square the enlisted men's 
quarters; opposite them, the officers' quar- 
ters; west, the hospital and storeroom; east, 
the bakery, magazine, and blacksmith's shop ; 
and beyond, the stables and corral for the 
cattle. It was this precious herd of cattle 
which was the envy of the hungry and thievish 
Indians; and it was this corral (cattle pen) 
which kept the garrison under arms and the 
trumpeter ready to sound the "long roll" at 
any moment. The little group of Indian tepees 
outside the stockade was the camp of the 
friendly Indian scouts ; for our officers and our 
Army have always made friends among the 
Indians. Here is what the doctor wrote of 
Buford and its Indian neighbors : — 



38 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

"In 1830 the Northwest Fur Company es- 
tabhshed in Montana, on the left bank of the 
Upper Missouri, two miles above its conflu- 
ence with the Yellowstone River, a trading- 
post which was named Fort Union. Situated 
on the grazing-ground of countless herds of 
buffalo, and surrounded by numerous Indian 
tribes engaged in hunting, the location of the 
post for purposes of trade was admirable. The 
white men engaged in the fur-trade in these 
distant regions were little given to literary pur- 
suits, and have left but scanty material for the 
historian. But from such accounts as have 
come down to us relative to the aborigines, at 
the time of the establishment of Fort Union, 
and the course of events during the ensuing 
thirty years, it would seem that history had 
but repeated itself, and that instead of relat- 
ing tales of early days on the Atlantic Coast, 
Washington Irving might have had a prophe- 
tic vision of the Sioux and Assiniboines of the 
Upper Missouri in the middle of the nineteenth 
century when he wrote: *A11 the world knows 



' "jfl^ "n* ''''* 



?"~I^lju^(ji Lfl I- 




-isf*. 



mc^H^ 



ft?^V4^ 



mP^ » 




■J, #4MyV^ " 



iMw- ^ "w^ "^ 










*xa««^- ^^"^m 



■.•M'ny 



il?»M),tAj^ 



)i)!i;»^ 



•Ji^ 



FORT BUFORD, DAKOTA TERRITORY, IN l868 
From a drawing 



FORT BUFORD 39 

the lamentable state in which these poor sav- 
ages were found, not only deficient in the com- 
forts of life, but what is still worse, most pite- 
ously and unfortunately blind to the miseries 
of their situation. But no sooner did the be- 
nevolent inhabitants of the East behold their 
sad condition than they immediately went to 
work to ameliorate and improve it. They intro- 
duced among them rum, gin, brandy, and the 
other comforts of life, and it is astonishing how 
soon the poor savages learned to estimate 
those blessings : they likewise made known to 
them a thousand remedies by which the most 
inveterate diseases are alleviated and healed, 
and that they might comprehend the benefit 
and enjoy the comforts of these medicines 
they previously introduced among them the 
diseases which they were calculated to cure.' 
One of the earliest recorded deeds of Fort 
Union ofwhich we have any knowledge relates 
to the establishment of a still for the manu- 
facture of whiskey; corn [for this purpose 
being procured from the Mandans and Rees, 



40 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

living about two hundred miles down the 
river. 

"The Indian tribes resorting to Fort Union 
to trade were the Sioux, Assiniboines, Crows, 
Crees, Arichavees, Mandans, and Gros Ven- 
tres. Of all these the Sioux appear to have suf- 
fered least from contact with the whites. 
While many tribes were decimated by small- 
pox and other diseases, and despoiled of their 
wealth of horses and robes by the traffic in 
whiskey, the Sioux appear in great measure 
to have avoided both physical and moral con- 
tagion. They held themselves aloof from the 
white intruders and tolerated them as evils 
necessary to secure the coveted articles of 
sugar, coffee, tobacco, and gunpowder. 

"Just what relations subsisted during all 
these years between Fort Union and the Unk- 
papas it would be difficult to ascertain. That 
these relations were at least strained is evi- 
dent from the remarks of Bear's Rib, an aged 
chief of the Unkpapas. He had become in his 
declining years a friend of the whites, and had 



FORT BUFORD 41 

betaken himself to government rations at the 
Indian Agency at Fort Rice, D.T. But a few 
days before his death, in 1866, he made the 
following address to his brother, to his son, 
then aged about eight years, and to the Agent 
at Fort Rice: — 

" ' Brother, a voice from the spirit land has 
called for me. Before I go I wish you all to 
hear my words. I know you will. My counsel 
is to be friends with the whites, and the great 
men of the whites will help you in times of 
need. But above all things, when I am no 
more, I desire you not to mourn about the 
place where I lie, as is the custom of our 
people, — the burial place provided me by my 
friends, the whites, — but visit it quietly, and 
when you do so remember my words, and 
when my people come in, tell them where I 
lie and what I said. My spirit will hear your 
words, and let not one of them think my 
wishes are not for their good. To those who 
are so foolish as to think they can master and 
rule the whites, let their bows be at once un- 



42 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

strung, and listen to one who knows and feels 
only good from the whites. My son cannot 
hear my words, but, brother, you do, and 
when he grows up repeat to him these re- 
quests.' 

"In July, 1866, the site for the future Fort 
Buford was selected ; on the left bank of the 
Missouri about a mile below the mouth of the 
Yellowstone, and three miles east from Fort 
Union. Camp was pitched here and work be- 
gun. A sawmill which had been brought was 
put in operation, logs were cut, and a plot of 
ground was speedily enclosed with a stockade, 
within which were erected the quarters neces- 
sary for the shelter of troops. Opposition was 
encountered from the first, but not of a vigor- 
ous character until late in the fall, the elite of 
the Sioux warriors, fortunately for the new 
post, having been occupied with the Fort 
Phil Kearny massacre and similar enterprises. 
At length, in October, Sitting Bull appeared 
on the scene. Henceforward the situation be- 
came serious. He sent orders to the garrison 



FORT BUFORD 43 

to leave the country at once, and proclaimed 
his uncompromising hostility. The work of 
procuring wood for the winter's use was 
carried on with the utmost difficulty. 

" During the winter, reports found their way 
into the Eastern newspapers, stating that Fort 
Buford had been captured, its garrison mas- 
sacred, and that the wife of the Commandant, 
bound to a horse, had disappeared. 

"In July, 1867 [date of Dr. Kimball's ar- 
rival], the garrison was increased by the ad- 
dition of four companies of infantry, of about 
one hundred men each, thus raising the 
strength of the command to a little over five 
hundred men. The troops were also armed 
with breech-loading rifles in place of the old 
muzzle-loading muskets hitherto in use. In 
consequence of these changes, the chances of 
victory for the Sioux warriors were seriously 
diminished. Ceaseless watch and guard over 
the fort was, however, none the less maintained. 

"One afternoon in August, the Colonel's 
cow having strayed a few yards too far, was 



44 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

trussed with arrows by Indians concealed in 
a coulee y and immediately afterward a war 
party of about a dozen savages mounted on 
ponies showed themselves on a small rise of 
ground scarcely a thousand yards from the 
fort, where they performed a pantomime of 
gestures expressing contempt and defiance, 
and rode off toward the hills. Twenty mounted 
soldiers started as soon as possible in pursuit, 
with wholly negative results. War parties 
continued constantly to hover around, and the 
smallest diminution of watchfulness on the 
part of the squads engaged in gathering wood 
and hay was almost certain to be sharply re- 
proved by a sudden shower of arrows from 
thicket or ravine. 

"Messages from Sitting Bull were received 
from time to time announcing that at no dis- 
tant day Fort Buford was to be destroyed 
from the face of the earth." 

The winters inside the stockade were a com- 
pound of danger and monotony — the usual 



FORT BUFORD 45 

chances of war. Here is a specimen day de- 
scribed in an old letter: — 

"I rise about eight a.m., and finish break- 
fast at nine o'clock. The next hour is spent 
in the hospital and from that time until one 
P.M. I am busy writing up my reports, reading 
or studying. At one o'clock we have lunch, a 
bowl of bread and milk and a piece of pie, and 
the afternoon is then usually spent with my 
horse, dogs, and gun, and other hunters, on 
the prairie or in the woods. At five p.m. we 
have dinner, to which I bring an appetite that 
would do honor to a wolf — and by the way, 
we have a good cook. The evening is spent in 
reading, writing, and visiting." 

A menu of the officers' mess for a day shows 
that the afternoon chase was often success- 
ful:— 

Breakfast — antelope chops. 

Dinner — Missouri River catfish, prairie 

chicken (grouse), and roast 

buffalo. 
Supper — Elk steak. 



46 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

At that time buffalo skins were the coin cur- 
rent of the trappers and Indians. " I get a buf- 
falo robe, that in the States would be worth 
from $20 to ^30, for a professional visit or pre- 
scription." Skins of all sorts were used for 
clothing. The surgeon's outdoor winter dress 
is humorously described : ** First a pair of buf- 
falo overshoes — buffalo hide with the hair on, 
making a shoe about two inches thick all 
around, thus adding four inches in length and 
four in breadth to my natural foot; gloves 
reaching nearly to my shoulders, woolen, 
and lined with deerskin, a shaggy buffalo 
overcoat, and bearskin leggins. My cap is 
made from a beaver's skin and is the respect- 
able feature of my outlandish outfit." This 
was a unique "fatigue" uniform suited to the 
Arctic winters of Dakota. 

Dr. Kimball always made friends with the 
Indians, and doubtless did them many a good 
turn professionally. His interest in their lan- 
guage and ethnology grew from day to day and 
he soon acquired the six hundred words of the 



FORT BUFORD 47 

Sioux vocabulary, and spoke fluently. As this 
was the court language of the Northern In- 
dians, he was able to make himself under- 
stood among several friendly tribes who often 
visited Buford to trade and to receive their 
annuities from the Government. 

Among these tribes were the Assiniboines 
and their relatives. The oflScers occasionally 
visited these Indian camps and the surgeon 
writes of their reception, on one occasion: 
"The camp, composed of 1500 individuals, 
was arranged in circular form; the tepees or 
lodges, built of poles stuck in the ground and 
coming together at the top in the form of a 
cone, were covered with buffalo skins. Around 
this circle they kept a constant picket, as they 
were in a state of continual warfare with other 
tribes." The furniture of these nomadic homes 
consisted of a blanket or two, some robes and 
skins, tomahawks, bows and arrows, bark cra- 
dles, pipes and tobacco-pouches, paint-boxes, 
and three or four villainous wolf-dogs. The 
Indians received the officers with great dignity 



48 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

and conducted them to their chief's lodge. 
There he offered them the peace-pipe and 
"paw-paw" (dried buffalo meat); of course 
they partook of these dainties, and exchanged 
compliments, briefly, as to the Great Father 
at Washington, with execrations upon all 
enemies of the Assiniboines. An Indian dance 
followed — somewhat of a bore, I fancy, as 
the rites and ceremonies lasted an hour and a 
half. The guests were then suffered to depart, 
" poorer as to tobacco and cigars but with our 
scalps where they belong." 

Dr. Kimball again interested himself in 
gardening, and under cultivation, the desert 
soil produced corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, and 
cabbage — potatoes proved a failure. The 
herd at pasture on the hills furnished milk and 
butter for the table. But these pastoral de- 
lights and diplomatic exchanges with the In- 
dians were sometimes interrupted by war. 

One fine August day (1868) the herd of 
two hundred and fifty cattle was grazing 
about a mile and a half from the fort, guarded 



FORT BUFORD 49 

by twenty-five cavalrymen. "All at once," 
writes the doctor, "from half a dozen ravines 
and on all sides Indians came tearing down on 
them, with their hideous yells, stampeding the 
herd and taking the men by surprise. They, 
however, immediately rallied and fought an 
overwhelming force of Indians until the troops 
from the fort could get there, which was in a 
very few minutes, as the 'lookout' saw the 
first dash and gave the alarm to men — who 
had their guns ready at a moment's notice. A 
mile and a half was never run more quickly by 
a body of footmen. During this time some of 
the Indians had been driving the cattle at the 
top of their speed into the hills, or *bad lands.' 
And now the fight became interesting — the 
liveliest fight I have seen since the days of 
the Rebellion. These Indians were select war 
parties from several different tribes, — Sioux, 
Ogallalahs, Cheyennes, and Comanches, — 
all splendidly mounted and the best horsemen 
I ever saw. They fought to cover the retreat 
of the herd — and several times they charged 



50 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

down on us, forcing us to stand on the defen- 
sive, as they outnumbered us three to one. It 
was exciting in the extreme to see the prairie 
covered with those splendid horsemen, hide- 
ously painted, whooping and yelling, riding 
at the top of their speed right into our fire, 
trying to break our line. We drove them, how- 
ever, as fast as infantry could, and recaptured 
between fifty and sixty of the cattle. One 
Lieutenant (Lieutenant Cusick) with eight 
mounted men made a most gallant charge, and 
only by what seems a miracle escaped with his 
life. The Indians always make extra exertions 
to capture an officer and gave their whole 
attention to killing the Lieutenant; being 
better mounted, they were soon neck and neck 
with him, shooting their arrows like hail, bury- 
ing them in his saddle and sending them all 
around him. For nearly half a mile the break- 
neck race was run until our men, who were 
coming up at a double-quick, got within range, 
when an Indian struck the Lieutenant on the 
back with a war club — a 'coup' — and re- 



FORT BUFORD 51 

treated. The Indians fairly won the day in 
this fight, for they made off with two hun- 
dred cattle, leaving the garrison to face a 
winter with meat once a week only, and 
scant supplies of milk and butter." 

It seems a great blunder in tactics to have 
garrisoned Fort Buford chiefly with infantry, 
when the fort was surrounded by hostile In- 
dians, notably the best riders in the world. 
Fortunately for the garrison, the tribes were 
as yet unarmed with the rifle. The surgeon 
made at Buford careful and laborious studies 
of arrow wounds, only to find, before his 
book was ready for publication, that the In- 
dians were all furnished with the white man's 
weapons. 

Invariably Dr. Kimball discovered the best 
traits of his Indian neighbors. His knowledge 
of their language and his gentle manners in- 
spired their confidence, and induced them to 
speak out to him. One old chief. Red Stone, 
thus expounded to the surgeon the tribe's re- 
ligious creed. "There is," said he, "a great 



52 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

spirit — Wakon — who made the earth. He 
is awake and looking after his children during 
the summer, and sleeps during the winter and 
forgets them and lets them get cold. In the 
moon of the falling leaf, before he composes 
himself to his winter sleep, he fills his great 
pipe and takes a long smoke ; the balmy clouds 
float over the hills and woodlands, filling the 
air with the haze of the Indian summer." Red 
Stone is puzzled by the white man's conduct 
as compared with his beliefs : " If a man is poor 
among the whites," said he, "none of you 
notice him or give him anything, but treat him 
like a dog; whereas a Dakota gives his poor 
neighbor meat, he gives him horses, he makes 
his heart glad. Wah-k-tesh! the whites are very 
strange." No wonder that the story of our 
double-dealings with these savages has been 
called a " century of dishonor " ; no wonder that 
the guileless Indian thinkers were confused by 
the contradiction between our words and our 
doings. **If the whites," reasons Red Stone, 
"believe there is a good place for the good 



FORT BUFORD 53 

people and a bad place for the bad, why are 
the white men all so bad?" 
• But not every Indian found the white men 
"so bad." Hear this story of Crow Chief, a 
celebrated Mandan chief. His people, unlike 
most of their nomadic neighbors, lived in 
houses of mud and logs which they left only 
for long hunts. Their village was about two 
hundred and fifty miles below Fort Buford on 
the Missouri. The old chief, however, had 
outlived his days of hunting and war, and one 
icy day in December was found by the doctor 
and a young lieutenant lying helpless on the 
prairie. The man was really a victim of tuber- 
culosis, but with good food, medicine, and 
hospital care he began to improve. He became 
able to walk about the garrison, constantly 
telling how kindly he had been treated by the 
whites. But at last his strength suddenly 
failed and the day of his death (February 21, 
1869) he sent for his two rescuers and in In- 
dian fashion addressed them formally. Here is 
the translation. (Indian orators who are not 



54 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

skilled narrators often grow tiresome, but they 
have great moments.) 

"Soldier chiefs, my brothers," said the dy- 
ing Mandan, "in the moon when the wild 
geese were flying southward, I left the village 
and started with my people on their winter 
hunt. I was feeble then, having this bad 
cough which teases me so much, but thought 
I should get better hunting on the prairie and 
drinking the warm blood of the deer and buf- 
falo. But I could not hunt ; the game all ran 
away from me and laughed at me, and I had to 
lie in the camp and let my young men hunt. 
We slept fourteen nights from our village be- 
fore we saw the smoke of the white soldier's 
village [Fort Buford], and my body was more 
sick than when we started. So when my people 
decided to go farther and my son brought me 
a horse and told me to ride in company with 
the women, I concluded to go no farther with 
my people, but told them I would go and live 
with Medicine Bear until they returned. 
Medicine Bear received me kindly [Greek hos- 



FORT BUFORD 55 

pitality was no better], and gave me a comer 
in his lodge, but he was poor. I had to sleep 
on the naked ground, and every night this bad 
cough, which teases me so much, grew worse. 
At last buffalo were getting scarce and Medi- 
cine Bear with his people decided to move. I 
was too weak to go with them, and I resolved 
to go to the traders and see if they would be 
hospitable to a poor sick old man who had 
always been a friend to the whites. The trad- 
ers kept me one night, and then next morning, 
as I had no robes to trade, they told me to go 
away and not to trouble them. My heart was 
very bad, and I started across the prairie 
without anything to eat, going in the direction 
of my people. I traveled until the sun was 
far in the west, and then, being very weak and 
hungry and knowing that my nation was a 
long distance off, I lay down on the prairie to 
die, when you, soldier chiefs, my brothers, 
found me. I was at first afraid of the soldiers 
— they looked so fierce and stern with their 
bright guns and long knives ; but now I know 



56 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

that the soldiers are the only men that have 
big hearts. You brought me to your lodge 
and said kind words to me and I have slept 
in a good bed, better than I ever expected to 
lie in ; I have had plenty to eat and drink and 
good medicine to take. My brothers, I am 
very thankful; I am now about to die. The 
Great Spirit wants me and I must leave you. 
I would like to be buried with my war dress 
wrapped around me. My medal that the Great 
Father gave me, I wish to be given to my 
son when he returns, that he may look at it 
and be a friend to the whites, as his father has 
been. My pipe — the best pipe of the Man- 
dans, which has been smoked with my nation 
— I give to the Medicine Man^ the soldier 
chief y my brother, [I don't believe Dr. Kim- 
ball ever attained any higher rank or title than 
that !] When he smokes it, let him think that 
the Mandan chief had a big heart and was 
thankful. My brothers, I have but one more 
request to make of you and I shall not take it 
hard if you cannot grant it. It is dark here, I 



FORT BUFORD 57 

cannot see the fire through that iron [the air- 
tight stove of the hospital ward]. In an In- 
dian lodge they will keep a bright fire burning 
all night and I think it would do me good and 
make my heart warm. I would like to be car- 
ried to an Indian lodge where I can die look- 
ing at the fire. My brothers, I shall look for 
you in the other country. Shake hands with 
me. How! How!" 

All this I find in fading pencil lines written 
down by the "soldier chief" at the time. He 
adds : " Crow Chief was sent in an ambulance 
to an Indian lodge, as he requested, and placed 
in a corner where he could see the fire burning 
in the center of the wigwam. In this position 
he died. I have seldom been more interested 
than I was in the old man, or mourned a per- 
son more sincerely. He was by nature a great 
man and a gentleman. Every morning when 
I visited him, he would manifest great pleasure 
and, placing his hand on my shoulder, would 
almost caress me. He is among the last of a 



58 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

noble race — for the Mandans are now almost 
obliterated by war and smallpox. They are, 
in many respects, unlike other Indians ; many 
of them have light hair and blue eyes and a 
pleasant, kind expression. They have never 
been enemies to the whites. The Mandan pipe 
I would not part with for many a surgeon's 
fee. By virtue of owning it, I am now a Man- 
dan chief and can speak with authority in the 
tribe." That rash saying — '*The only good 
Indian is a dead Indian" is surely belied by 
the story of Crow Chief. 

The great changes of that day, the overland 
telegraph and railroad, can be traced in the 
Indian's expressions. "Big medicine" means 
to them anything mysterious, wonder-working 
or supernatural. Thus an Indian from the 
Platte (Military Department, Nebraska) re- 
ported that the whites over in that country 
had got "big medicine" to kill Indians and 
game. "It is," he said, "a long, small iron, 
stretched on poles, away across the country. 
You can put your ear to the pole and hear the 



FORT BUFORD 59 

medicine humming along/' He added that he 
and some others were going to cut it down, 
but left after they had worked a short time 
for a big storm came up and fire began to run 
along the iron and it commenced curling up. 
"They have got a steamboat over there that 
runs on the ground ; now you see it and now 
it is gone. Best horses can't keep up with it." 
The last word on aviation is not more mag- 
ical to us than the wire and the rail to the 
Dakotas of the sixties. 

Buford mails were very uncertain ; the bags 
were often captured by the Indians; and on 
one occasion, after three months of waiting, the 
doctor received nothing but a torn medical 
journal from the railroad mail pouch ! His dis- 
appointment perhaps accounts for an out- 
burst of wrath in one of his letters to his fam- 
ily ; he writes of this "forsaken land, this sweet 
country which ought to be left to the wolves 
and red-skins, at least until we can get letters 
from civilization in less than three months." 
In general, however, he was thoroughly con- 



6o A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

tented, absorbed in his professional work and 
his studies of climate, soil, and people. 

It was at Buford that Dr. Kimball secured 
the autobiography of Sitting Bull — in pic- 
ture writing. This precious " manuscript " was 
sent to the Curator of the Army Medical Mu- 
seum at Washington, and is there preserved 
in the archives. The book was brought into 
Fort Buford by a Yanktonnais Sioux and of- 
fered for sale and purchased for provisions 
worth $1.50. The doctor's keen eye saw the 
ethnological value of the rude drawings, and 
with the aid of the vender, other interpreters, 
and his own knowledge of Indian lore and lan- 
guage, deciphered the story and prepared an 
index. The sheets upon which the drawings 
were made were the muster-roll blanks of the 
31st U.S. Infantry and were doubtless stolen 
by Sitting Bull upon some raid. "Since the 
establishment of Fort Buford in 1866," 
writes Dr. Kimball, in his introduction to the 
find, " Sitting Bull, at the head of from sixty to 
seventy warriors, had been the terror of mail- 




SITTING BULL 
From a photograph by O S. Goff, i8Si 



FORT BUFORD 61 

carriers, wood-choppers, and small parties in 
the vicinity of the post, and from one hundred 
to two hundred miles from it either way up 
and down the Missouri River. During the time 
from 1866 to 1870, when the autobiography 
was written, this band had several times de- 
stroyed the mail and had stolen and run off 
with over two hundred head of cattle and 
killed a score of white men in the immediate 
vicinity of the Fort. . . . The word *coup,' 
which occurs frequently in the index, has been 
appropriated by the Sioux from the French 
(Sioux itself being the French name for Da- 
kota) \ 'Counting coup' signifies the striking 
of an enemy, either dead or alive, with a stick, 
bow, lance, or other weapon. The number of 
'coups' counted are enumerated along with 
the number of horses stolen and scalps taken 
in summing up the brave deeds of a warrior." 
The preface, index, and woodcuts of the draw- 
ings were published by the "New York Her- 
ald" in 1876. 
One of the sports of the Buford sojourn was 



62 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

the buffalo run ; " a helter-skelter race of miles ; 
a yell and we were off, — who that joined in 
such a chase can ever forget it!" It is not 
strange that the officers, shut within their 
stockade, cut off from newspapers, letters, 
news of the outside world, were ready to risk 
their lives for such a chase. An Indian cap- 
tured in a raid on Fort Buford, confessed to 
the surgeon and his friends, who had ridden 
out in search of game the day before: "We 
should have killed you all yesterday, but big 
chief was not ready." 

Dr. Kimball's many-sided life in the little 
Buford garrison often included the dignity of 
Judge-Advocate in courts martial. His trained 
mind and judgment enabled him both to 
prosecute and to advise. "How he would 
wrestle with death!" said a friend. With 
the same zeal and wisdom he could deal 
with messroom quarrels and camp misde- 
meanors. 

These tales of Buford explain why we named 
our mountain home in the quiet green Cats- 



FORT BUFORD 63 

kills, "Buford Lodge." The name "Buford," 
once associated with danger and daring, now 
recalls only happy memories of "dangers 
passed." 



Ill 

THE YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 

Survey of proposed route of the Northern Pacific Rail- 
road — Chief medical officer under General Terry and 
General Stanley, in command of three thousand men — 
Indian fights — General (Lieutenant-Colonel) Custer — 
Journal. 

" In all respects Dr. Kimball has been faithful, 
upright, and conscientious, discharging all his 
duties with signal ability and beloved by 
those with whom he has served. . . . 

"We well know how important is that 
column in the Merit Roll designated 'General 
Aptitude'; and Dr. Kimball fulfills all its re- 
quirements." (Extract from an official letter 
of the Medical Director, Department of the 
Dakotah, written after the young medical 
officer had passed his second examination for 
promotion in 1869 and become Surgeon-Cap- 
tain.) 

In 1869 occurred his marriage, July 15, to 
Miss Sarah Eddy, of Albany, New York. To- 



YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 65 

gether they returned to Fort Buford, where 
they spent some happy months in their Httle 
adobe quarters. 

Little Rock, Arkansas, was the next station. 
The three years spent there (1870-73) were 
uneventful; the climate seemed languorous 
and the duty tame after wind-swept plains 
and Indian wars. When, therefore, orders 
were received to take the field, they were 
welcome. 

The Yellowstone Expedition was organized 
to lay out and survey the route of the North- 
ern Pacific Railroad, and incidentally to select 
new sites for army posts. The military escort 
consisted of one regiment of cavalry, the 
famous Seventh, commanded by General — 
then Lieutenant-Colonel — Custer, and por- 
tions of four regiments of infantry, under 
General Stanley and General Terry. These 
officers were warm personal friends of Dr. 
Kimball, and it was at the special request of 
General Terry and Colonel Custer that he was 
ordered to this duty. It was a great responsi- 



66 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

bility for a young man in his thirties to have 
entire charge of the medical department of so 
large an expedition. The "Captain-Doctor" 
eagerly undertook the work and successfully 
prepared a medical outfit for three thousand 
men who were to spend four months cutting 
their way through an almost unexplored and 
hostile country. 

Again the Upper Missouri was followed as 
far north as Fort Rice, where the column left 
the river and struck out into the unknown. 
The route lay through the valley of the Yellow- 
stone at its junction with Powder River and 
onward. In May they had reached Fort Sully, 
South Dakota. There the surgeon wrote: 
"Camp on Oka-bo-gie Creek. Cold, bad 
weather — continue to wear our overcoats 
every day while in the saddle and to sit around 
rousing camp-fires in the evening, but I like 
it much better than the sunny South [Arkan- 
sas], hot, murky, and malarious." 

At this point the party was in sight of 
the Black Hills. The column advanced cau- 



YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 67 

tiously through country occupied by tribes 
who were said to be "always as bad as they 
could be." The command was arranged with 
a column of infantry in front and in the 
rear, and a column of cavalry on either side 
of the train. The Indians at first kept in the 
background, though small war parties were 
occasionally seen. On went the doughty col- 
umn, two hundred and fifty miles' march, until 
they arrived in July at the Yellowstone River. 
There they met a steamboat with further 
supplies and were ferried across the river, the 
work of a week. Thence the route was up the 
Yellowstone Valley, two hundred miles to 
Pompey's Pillar, then northward about fifty 
miles to the Mussel Shell River, a tributary 
of the Missouri, and back again to Fort Rice. 
Do the travelers on luxurious overland trains 
or dwellers in prosperous towns ever think of 
the hard fighting and campaigning that made 
possible their comfort and good fortune ? Yet 
the same landscape meets the eye to-day, bar- 
ring, perhaps, something of its savage quiet 



68 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

— "the stream [Yellowstone] broad and rapid, 
dotted with islands of cedar and fir trees, 
winding through broad savannas green with 
waving grass, while bold, high, precipitous 
bluffs destroy any tendency to tameness." 
Thus the doctor saw the river in 1873. 

The Indians soon lost their first awe of the 
large body of troops, and again and again 
harassed the expedition. "After a march of 
five hundred miles, fighting Indians and moun- 
tain passes, we are back at the crossing of the 
Yellowstone. The medical service during the 
war never labored under the difficulties we 
have had to encounter, cut off as we have been 
from our base of supplies for nearly seven 
weeks. I have had a case of fractured thigh 
produced by a bullet ; we transported the pa- 
tient about three hundred and fifty miles, and 
he is doing well." The fight was described by 
the late Samuel J. Barrows, then a young war 
correspondent of the "New York Tribune," 
with the Yellowstone Expedition. " It was at 
a critical time in the engagement," he writes, 



YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 69 

"and Custer, seeing that the Indians in large 
force had cKmbed the bluffs and were advanc- 
ing upon us, ordered Braden, with a detach- 
ment, to take and hold the bridge in front. It 
was a fierce onslaught which the Sioux made on 
this, one of the key-points to the battle-field. 
But Braden and his men held their ground 
stubbornly and repulsed the Indians with 
steady fire until the cavalry charge came to 
their relief; but the brave lieutenant fell, dan- 
gerously wounded in the thigh." The jolting 
of the ambulance over the untrodden prairie 
became unbearable to the wounded officer, and 
after a day or two of torture, he sent for the 
Chief Surgeon and begged him to dispatch 
him. Dr. Kimball calmly faced the situation, 
and devised on the spot a new species of litter. 
A canvas stretcher, hung between two pairs 
of wheels, was drawn by a mule led by a sol- 
dier. On this cot the wounded officer accom- 
plished his journey of nearly four hundred 
miles, declaring that the change was heaven 
after hell. He lives to tell the story with 



70 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

triumph, never forgetting his indebtedness to 
surgeon and commanding general. 

Add to this litter on wheels a motor and a 
canvas top, and you have the field ambulance 
used to-day upon all the battle-fields of Eu- 
rope. Such is the ingenuity and "prepared- 
ness" of the surgeon's mind. A description of 
litters and ambulances adopted by different 
nations was later much quoted from Dr. 
Kimball's article on "Transportation of the 
Wounded in War" (1898). 

A few items from his journal written on 
the march give vivid pictures of the route : — 

"August, 1873; eight miles through the 
'Bad Lands.' Main features are lava, scoria, 
cactus, rattlesnakes, and prairie dogs." 

(General Stanley states that the expedition 
passed over sixty miles of " Bad Lands.") 

"Thirteen barrels of whiskey destroyed to- 
day — thank God ! 

"Custer Creek — discovered by, and named 
for, him. 

"Frequent battles with Indians. Custer in 



YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 71 

advance; men often killed while hunting 
outside the camp.'* 

(General Stanley says in his report that 
Custer always volunteered to lead the column.) 

"'Cactus Camp'; two men killed — their 
bodies have been brought along to-day from 
last night's camp, to throw the Indians off the 
track of their grave : buried to-day at Retreat, 
in an open place between four large cotton- 
wood trees, Camp no. 35, just below lower end 
of an island in the Yellowstone ; both in one 
grave, over which the horses will be picketed 
to-night, to pack the ground, and so prevent 
discovery by Indians; coffin consisted of a 
wagon-cover. 

"Wolves made last night hideous. 

"Custer fighting Indians. 

"Alarm and Long Roll [to arms] in night, 
from Dickey's camp. 

"August 13th, 1873: Killed fifteen elk to- 
day. 

"Carried Braden on a litter — by twelve 
men. 



72 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

" August 1 5 th : * Pompey's Pillar ' — a mound 
one hundred and fifty feet high, on right bank 
of the Yellowstone. Big Horn Mountains with 
snowy summits seen in the distance. 

"Wheeled litter constructed for Braden 
proves a success. 

"August i6th: Indians stole in across the 
prairie and hid behind * Pompey's Pillar' in the 
timber. About eight a.m., when the river-bank 
was covered with men, many in bathing, the 
Indians opened fire on them. The scampering 
of naked men up the hill was very comical. 
After the volley, the Indians ran across the 
valley and got into the hills. Captain French 
got a bullet in his saddle, — nobody hurt. 

"August 17th. Saw buffalo to-day; killed 
several. 

"August 1 8th. Buffalo in thousands. Herd 
(beef cattle) stampeded again last night, and 
nine head have not been recovered. Four 
thousand feet above the sea. Snowy moun- 
tains and Judith Pass in view. Snow in sight 
for several days. 



YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 73 

"August 19th. Mussel Shell River, at two- 
thirty P.M. Countless buffalo. 

"August 20th. A fine river it is; cotton- 
woods, lots of cherries, and beaver. To-day 
we commence our eastward march — two 
months out from Fort Rice. 

"August 22d. Chickens (prairie) ; antelope, 
buffalo, deer, and fish in our mess. Grass 
would be good here, but has everywhere been 
destroyed by the immense herds of buffalo. 

"August 24th. Grizzlies abundant in the 
'Cherry Gardens.' 

"August 26th. Indians seen by Bloody 
Knife — scout. 

"September ist. Had the last chicken- 
shooting of the season on this plain to-day. 
Shot every bird on the wing, and did not miss 
a shot. — Hospital full. 

"September 3d. [The return journey.] On 
the battle-ground of Tongue River. The re- 
mains of Private John Ball, killed by Indians 
August 4th, while out hunting, were found 
this P.M., and identified by a pair of trousers 



74 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

near him. All that was left was the skull and 
a portion of the other bones. The man's flesh 
had been eaten by wolves and the bones 
cracked for the marrow, some being destroyed 
entirely. All that were left were buried at 
Retreat to-day, on the battle-field. 

"Very good duck hunting — got half a 
dozen teal. 

"September 5th. Wagon again upset, spill- 
ing out everything ; did not get into camp until 
two hours after the train. This makes six times 
I Ve had a wagon over since leaving Yankton. 

"September 8th. Killed a fine buffalo cow 
this P.M. Between one and two hundred mules 
escaped last night. 

" Prairie kept from taking fire only by con- 
stant effort. 

"Best prairie-chicken shooting on Davis 
Creek, through the *Bad Lands,' I ever saw; 
got ten. 

"Great number of antelopes found dead 
on the prairie — murrain or epizootic. 

"Prairie fire of yesterday put out by the 



YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 75 

rain, but has started anew from Custer's camp 
of last night ; fire is seen shortly after we make 
camp coming toward us. By a counter-fire to 
leeward, and by moving on, we can escape it. 
"September 22d. Near Fort Abraham Lin- 
coln, D.T. Stock and men nearly worn out. 
Custer, with the engineers, arrived at six p.m. 
yesterday." 

An article written fourteen years later by 
Mr. Barrows, still correspondent of the "New 
York Tribune," might be called a postscript 
to the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873. It is 
dated West Point, New York: — 

"As the boat landed at West Point, a pleas- 
ing surprise awaited us. The officer in blouse 
and fatigue cap who came down to meet the 
crowd of visitors from the boat, seen from the 
deck was simply an officer in the United States 
Army; but when the gangplank was laid and 
we stepped ashore and caught a view of his 
features and heard the tones of his voice, there 
was no mistaking it ; it could not be anybody 



76 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

else — it was Kimball, without a shadow of 
doubt. It speaks well for the life of an army 
surgeon that fourteen years had left no traces 
of care upon his face and no silver in his hair. 
When you have eaten at the same mess-table, 
morning, noon, and night, through a whole 
campaign and marched together on horseback 
hundreds of miles over the Western Plains and 
camped in the same sagebrush and cactus, and 
drunk of the same alkali water, and longed 
together for a good many things that you 
could n't get, the memory of the experience is 
too well rubbed in to be easily rubbed out. One 
impression made so long ago was easily revived 
and strengthened, — namely, that the duties 
of the army surgeon do not necessarily impair 
the finer sensibilities, and that our friend with 
the gold leaf on his shoulders, wherever found, 
— in tent, in saddle, or on the piazza of his 
home at West Point, — was always and for- 
ever in word and deed a gentleman." 

That same mess-table of the Yellowstone 
party was rather remarkable for its make-up. 




N 



YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 77 

Literally, the board was, as the surgeon wrote, 
"my amputating-table, which we carry along 
in the medicine wagon." But this fact did not 
disturb the appetites of the convives. They were 
six, including General Stanley, several young 
lieutenants, the war correspondent, and the 
Chief Surgeon. As Mr. Barrows wrote, the 
intimate camp life promoted good fellowship 
and made some lasting friendships. 

At headquarters of the Expedition there 
was a distinguished group of scientific men, 
with the commanding generals. Colonel Fred 
Grant and others. From time to time this 
society was varied by English guests, often 
younger sons who were seeking their fortunes 
in the Far West, or others who were simply en- 
joying the wild for its own sake. At one time 
there were at headquarters three of these 
high-bred camp-followers; among them Lord 
Frewen. Men like Morton Frewen brought 
into the camp the culture and ideas of the Old 
World; others, mere triflers, — good fellows, 
too, perhaps, — spent most of their time over 



78 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

cards and cups. The doctor used to recall 
laughingly two such comrades. After a long 
bout one of them rose in wrath, declaring in 
language worthy of Scott, "Donald of Caith- 
ness ( .?) ; I will cleave you to the chine — if 
— if—!." 

The last word about the Yellowstone coun- 
try was summed up by the campaign poet in 
the following verses : — 

"After Hood" 

"No clouds, no rain. 
No dew, no grain, 

No night, no noon, no proper time of day, 
No trees, no interrupted view. 
No dearth of sand or distance blue. 
No track, no path, no road, no well-known way, 
No end to plain and mound. 
No scene but barren ground, 
No end to dust and heat, 
No decent thing to eat. 

No shade, no meadow streams nor rivers clear, 
No mountains, no forests green, 
No soft grasses to be seen, 
No growth, no warmth, but three months of 
the year. 



YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION 79 

No buffalo in the land, 
No mines or golden sand; 

"No water, except in stagnant pool, 
No ice our fevered throats to cool, 
No settlers on the road. 
No profit to make bonds good. 
With no necessity, no purpose, no empire's 

way; — 
Heaven cut short the No'-thern Pacific's day." 

The verses may have been written at the 
close of a bad day, but we give them with 
apologies to the great Northwest and its 
railway. 



IV 

THE BLACK HILLS AND THE BIG HORN 

Chief Surgeon of the Indian campaign under General 
Custer, 1876 — At Fort Lincoln, after the battle of the 
Big Horn — Fort Brady, Sault Sainte Marie — A Jesuit 
missionary, Father Ferard — Ordered to Governor's 
Island, New York Harbor. 

The "Captain-Doctor's" next station was 
Fort Randall, in South Dakota: "The most 
southerly of the chain of military posts along 
the Missouri River in Dakota Territory, and 
the last one between the hostile Indians and 
the white settlements of Southeast Dakota 
and Northern Nebraska." So he wrote in 1875, 
in a letter to the "New York World," for 
the doctor found time, in the midst of many 
duties, to write occasional letters to the New 
York papers describing the situation at these 
frontier posts. The little garrison at Fort 
Randall was in the midst of a troubled re- 
gion. Sioux and half-Sioux (Brules) were at 
war among themselves ; when the enemy was a 



BLACK HILLS AND BIG HORN 81 

tribe friendly to the United States, the Sioux 
did not hesitate also "to rob, fight, and scalp 
their nearest neighbors — sometimes poor, 
hard-working settlers, sometimes the United 
States troops themselves. The logic of the 
Brule is that the Great Father at Washington 
feeds him because he fears him, and he looks 
with a patronizing air on Wa-See-Chee, the 
white man (literally, *the man that works'), 
who is a pretty good fellow so long as he pro- 
vides plenty of rations, but is to be stimulated 
in case of any remissness by a raid of robbers, 
murderers, and scalpers; and, in fact, to be 
raided upon once in a while on general Indian 
principles." 

The familiar raid was sometimes varied by 
a day like this at Fort Randall : after twenty 
miles in the saddle, the doctor was met by a 
telegram summoning him to the Fonca Agency 
on account of an outbreak of cholera. Then 
followed a night ride on a wild Mexican mus- 
tang pony, through swarms of gnats and 
mosquitoes, over a swampy and uncertain road. 



82 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

After several hair-breadth escapes, "we made 
it at last," he writes, "fifty-six miles in the 
saddle, a bag of prairie chickens and thirty- 
six dollars for a day's work." 

How to deal with the hostile Indians, how to 
treat the friendly ones, were living questions 
on the plains in the seventies. Dakota, — the 
Black Hills, and Wyoming, — the Big Horn 
region, were the great battle-grounds. In 
1875 an expedition against the Indians was 
proposed. The following letter from General 
Custer was dated Fort Abraham Lincoln, Da- 
kota Territory, April 25, 1875: — 

My dear Doctor: — 

I write to say that it would be extremely 
agreeable to me if you would accompany the 
expedition as chief medical officer. In fact, 
I can further say, if permitted to choose from 
the medical officers of this Department the 
one I most prefer for that position, you would 
be my unhesitating choice — and I hope the 
detail may fall to you. 

Very truly yours, 
(Signed) G. A. Custer. 



BLACK HILLS AND BIG HORN 83 

The long marches of the Yellowstone Ex- 
pedition had brought General Custer into most 
friendly relations with Dr. Kimball. By a cu- 
rious tangle of circumstances, the expedition 
against the Indians was delayed for a year. 
Dr. Kimball was ordered to the duty of its 
Chief Surgeon, in March, 1876. He left Fort 
Randall and proceeded to St. Paul — head- 
quarters of the Department — to await the 
arrival of troops and hospital supplies. Just as 
he was ready to join General Custer, a great 
blizzard delayed the departure of the troops. 
Meantime, the command, under General Terry 
and General Custer, had marched from Fort 
Lincoln, and the fatal battle of the Big Horn 
occurred in June, 1876. But for the extra- 
ordinary blizzard undoubtedly the Chief Sur- 
geon would have shared the fate of his subor- 
dinates. Assistant Surgeons Lord and DeWolf. 
With General Custer and his command, they 
were killed in the fight on the Big Horn. Two 
weeks later Dr. Kimball accompanied the be- 
lated detachment of five hundred troops from 



84 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

Fort Brady (Sault Sainte Marie), Michigan, 
to the mouth of the Big Horn River, on the 
Yellowstone. It was a long journey by the Lake 
to Duluth, thence to the Missouri River, past 
Fort Buford, and up the Yellowstone again. 
On July 21, 1876, he writes : " Steamer Carroll, 
thirty miles below Fort Stevenson, Dakota 
Territory: I found Mrs. Custer at Fort Lincoln 
greatly prostrated." 

Dr. KimbalFs comment on the loss of his 
friend. General Custer, was a copy, found in 
his notebook, of Longfellow's poem, "The 
Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face.'' He was said 
to have been the slayer of General Custer, the 
"White Chief with yellow hair." 

''In that desolate land and lone, 
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone 

Roar down their mountain path, 
By their fires the Sioux Chiefs 
Muttered their woes and griefs 

And the menace of their wrath. 

• ••••••• 

"Whose was the right and the wrong .^ 
Sing it, O funeral song 

With a voice that is full of tears, 



BLACK HILLS AND BIG HORN 85 

And say that our broken faith 
Wrought all this ruin and scathe, 
In the Year of a Hundred Years." 

We all know of Mrs. Custer's wonderful 
marches with her husband on the great plains 
— she has told her own story vividly and ably. 
The surgeon and several officers of the Sev- 
enth Cavalry, often rode hour after hour with 
the ladles, Mrs. Custer and her sister-in-law; 
General Custer was frequently in advance. 
The invariable orders on the plains were that, 
in case of attack, the women should be shot 
by the nearest officer, rather than be subjected 
to murder or torture at the hands of the In- 
dians. Mrs. Custer herself refers to this order, 
and gratefully mentions her officer guard — 
among them, the surgeon. In a recent letter 
she writes: "I remember well the long march 
I made, riding so much of the five hundred 
miles beside the doctor — turned over to him 
by the general. The doctor, having little to 
do, —since we were such a healthy lot, — 
was the best sort of a ' squire of dames.' " 



86 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

On July 29, Dr. Kimball writes again from 
the steamer Carroll: "Had a skirmish with 
the Sioux at the mouth of Powder River, this, 
five to seven, p.m. There were about two 
hundred of them, apparently ; but it was only a 
long-range skirmish, in which we had one man 
slightly wounded, and the Indians lost a few 
horses killed, and we captured a few guns and 
pistols." A petty incident of travel on those 
wild rivers ! In contrast with the rude episode 
is the glimpse of Fort Buford revisited. "The 
place had a strange fascination for me," he 
writes. "... Our little house, with its flat 
dirt roof, pink walls, and red cross, is in fair 
preservation, and the barren hills and bleak 
prairie are alike unchanged." 

The next few years of Dr. Kimball's career 
show the constant changes of army life. A slight 
lull in Indian warfare finds him at Fort Brady, 
Michigan (1877), — "hibernating in the im- 
mense snow-banks of this Arctic region, writ- 
ing, reading, and sleighing." He adds: "The 
Indian war is by no means over, but I hope to 



BLACK HILLS AND BIG HORN 87 

be let alone next season, to enjoy here the cool, 
quiet summer, the fishing and sailing and the 
aromatic breezes, fragrant with balsam and 
fir. But if not [ever the debonair spirit], there 
is good to be got in roaming the prairies, and 
I shall not grumble." 

At this time the surgeon made the acquaint- 
ance of Father Ferard, a Jesuit priest who had 
long been a missionary to the Indians and 
settlers in the neighborhood. The doctor's 
mind and sympathies were broad enough to see 
the great good accomplished by the unselfish 
men of the Roman Catholic belief in these 
remote lands and among simple peoples. I 
know that he greatly prized the friendship of 
this Jesuit priest, who was a man of learning 
and of piety. Father Ferard aroused his 
friend's interest in the Jesuit "Relations," and 
in the country surrounding Fort Brady. I 
find a sketch of the place written during his 
station there. Here are a few extracts : — 

"At the foot of these rapids is the village — 
no mushroom town of modern Western growth, 



88 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

it boasts an antiquity of more than two cen- 
turies, and is but little the junior of Plymouth 
Rock. Here, in 1667-68, was the station of 
Father Marquette, the Jesuit Missionary and 
explorer ; and here the young Marquette died, 
at the age of thirty-eight. The mission is now 
sustained by Father Ferard, a worthy succes- 
sor of the devoted and self-sacrificing priests. 
[Father Ferard was at that time compiling 
a dictionary of the Ojibway language.] He 
finds a great affinity between the roots of this 
language and those of the Semitic and Aryan, 
or Indo-Germanic, tongues. Apropos of this 
and the origin of the Indian is a very remark- 
able anecdote related to me by Father Ferard. 
A Jesuit priest, after having been attached to 
the Huron mission in Canada for several years, 
was recalled to Europe and sent to China. 
During his missionary travel in the North of 
China, he was surprised to meet a squaw whom 
he had formerly known in Canada. In answer 
to his inquiries, she stated that she had been 
taken captive, and had journeyed from camp 



BLACK HILLS AND BIG HORN 89 

to camp with her different captors until she 
had come to that part of Chinese Tartary 
where she met him. When he asked her how 
she made herself understood, she repHed that 
the language of the country and her own lan- 
guage were not so dissimilar but that she could 
understand and be understood. Upon which 
the priest had the curiosity to compare some 
of the most common words of both languages, 
and found the radicals in the two tongues 
strikingly related. 

"The military occupation of the Sault 
[*Soo'] dates back to 1750. After the fall of 
Quebec it became in succession French, Eng- 
lish, Indian (in Pontiac's War — 1763), Eng- 
lish again, and finally American, when the gar- 
rison was known as Fort Brady. The village 
is unique; it now contains [1878] about fifteen 
hundred inhabitants, a motley crew of English, 
French, Indians, and half-breeds. The Creoles 
trace back their lineage for more than two 
hundred years, to the early days of the Hud- 
son's Bay Fur Company; and not a few bear 



90 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

the surnames of the chevahers of France. 
They are usually honest, not lazy or idle, but a 
shiftless, improvident class — fishermen and 
hunters." 

The Sault prospered in the days of the port- 
age and the first canal, when Michigan copper 
was a new find : but the big government lock 
then in construction promised to obliterate the 
falls (eighteen feet in height) and blot out the 
village with all its sometime prosperity. With 
or without the lock, however, Sault Ste. Marie 
is now a town of more than twelve thousand 
inhabitants. 

After the station at Fort Brady, Dr. Kim- 
ball was ordered eastward, instead of west- 
ward. At Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the 
riots in the mining region made it necessary 
to call in the Army. The duties were not se- 
rious or prolonged, and the officers found the 
grateful townspeople gracious and hospitable. 

When the rioters were silenced, orders were 
received to proceed to Governor's Island, New 
York Harbor. This detail came by request of 




< 
O 

Q 
< 

2 S 

M O 



BLACK HILLS AND BIG HORN 91 

Dr. Kimbairs friend, General Hancock, the 
commanding officer of the Department of the 
East. Colonel John M. Cuyler, one of the most 
distinguished and able men of his corps, was 
Medical Director of the Department. He be- 
came a loyal and devoted friend of his young 
Assistant Surgeon, Captain Kimball. The son 
born April 24, 1878, at Governor's Island, was 
christened James Cuyler, a name which per- 
petuates the friendship of two noble spirits. 
Nearly two years were spent on Governor's 
Island. It must have been a delightful station, 
with two such men as General Hancock and 
Dr. Cuyler in the little Island circle. Gov- 
ernor's Island is a unique spot in our national 
history, and Dr. Kimball's two "tours" of 
duty there — twenty years apart — mark it 
also in our family annals. The two sons spent 
each a babyhood of eighteen months on the 
Island ; thence each boy went westward — one 
to Wyoming, one to Nebraska. 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 

The Ute War — Forced cavalry march for relief of 
Thornburgh's command — Pursuit of Indians — Fort 
Sidney, Nebraska — Garrison notes — Whist clubs. 

An army post is hard to find on the map : gen- 
erally speaking, it is sure to be as remote from 
civilization, as difficult to reach, as possible. 
Fort Sanders, Wyoming Territory, means a 
spot on the eastern slope of the Continental 
Divide, six hundred miles west of Omaha, near 
the towns of Cheyenne and Laramie. In the 
autumn of 1879, father, mother, and son found 
themselves at this frontier post, a far cry from 
the Island garrison in New York Harbor. 
No sooner unpacked than the surgeon was hur- 
ried into the field in the Ute War. For, regard- 
less of seasons, the Indians "break out" sum- 
mer or winter, whenever sufficiently provoked, 
by hunger or rage. The Ute War was, there- 
fore, a bitter experience on the slopes of the 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 93 

Rocky Mountains in midwinter. The following 
letter to his mother tells in part the story of 
the doctor's share in the campaign : — 



December 15, 1879. 
Dear Mother: — ■ 

Just home from the Ute War, and I write a 
line to let you know that neither Ute bullets 
nor Rocky Mountain storms have harmed me. 
The campaign has been a hard one by reason 
of the season of year and the rugged country. 
From the first of October to the ninth of De- 
cember I was not in a house, nor, indeed, saw 
one. We were encamped on White River — I 
left there December 2 with six men, and after 
a journey of eight days got on this side of 
the Rockies. While crossing the "Divide," 
the weather was bitter cold; the wind blew fu- 
riously, and drifting snow made it hard to fol- 
low the path, a mere mountain trail. We lost 
it, in fact, twice, but were so fortunate as to 
recover it, and the first log ranch-house we 
reached looked better to me than ever did the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel. 



94 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

This incident of the return from White 
River gives no idea of what went before — 
the forced march of the cavalry, under General 
Merritt, for the relief of Major Thornburgh's 
command. The story of the march was writ-^ 
ten by Dr. Kimball nearly twenty years later 
for a dinner given by officers of the Second 
Cavalry at Fort Wingate, New Mexico. I 
quote from this after-dinner address : — 

"Mr. President and Gentlemen, — I am 
thoroughly loyal to my own corps, but if I did 
not belong to the Medical Department, I 
should choose the Cavalry arm of the Service ; 
and if I belonged to the Cavalry, I should by 
all means choose the Second Cavalry. As to- 
night we are one in spirit, it is with a trooper's 
pride that I recall a march famous in the an- 
nals of Cavalry. General Merritt has told 
me that he had searched history and records in 
vain for a parallel of this march of the Second 
Cavalry, the strength of the column and other 
circumstances being taken into consideration." 

The Thornburgh disaster was the result of 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 95 

an attempt to force the Indians to become 
farmers and cultivate the soil. 

"When Agent Meeker, at White River, tried 
to plough some land which the Utes wished to 
keep for grazing purposes, the quarrel became 
an open revolt. Meeker and his family were 
massacred, but not before he had asked for 
military assistance. To this end Major Thorn- 
burgh and his command were on their way 
from Rawlins, one hundred and eighty-five 
miles distant, when, at Deer Creek, Colorado, 
they were met by the Ute chiefs who protested 
against further advance. The following morn- 
ing the Indians made a furious attack upon 
the small detachment (one hundred and fifty- 
five men and six officers), which was then 
separated by nearly a mile from the remainder 
of the command. This small body at length 
succeeded, after hard fighting, in joining the 
rest of the troops, and the wagon train was 
'parked' in a hastily selected camp on the 
bank of Milk Creek. As usual, the corral was 
in the form of an ellipse open at one end. 



96 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

This open end was filled with wounded ani- 
mals, shot down and placed there as a cover 
for the troops. Bundles of bedding, sacks of 
flour and grain were also used for the same 
purpose. . . . Meantime the Indians kept up a 
steady fusillade, also setting fire to the grass to 
the windward of the corral. The beleaguered 
men had to fight prairie fires, shoot Indians, 
unload stores, and build breastworks all at 
once. After a struggle of five hours the troops, 
carrying their wounded with them, withdrew 
into the shelter of the corral. The Indians, dis- 
appointed in their expectation of at once an- 
nihilating the command, gathered on a hill 
overlooking the corral, concentrated their fire 
on the mules and horses, and killed three 
fourths of them before sundown. At last all 
was quiet on Milk Creek, and the besieged 
had opportunity to look about them and con- 
sider the situation. One third of the force 
which had marched in the morning was killed or 
wounded. Ten men, including Major Thorn- 
burgh, were dead, and forty-one were wounded, 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 97 

one of whom was the medical officer. The com- 
mand had devolved upon Captain Payne, 
Fifth Cavalry, himself twice wounded. To 
move was impossible, to obtain assistance 
from the outside world was their only hope. 
Dispatches were written out, and at midnight 
the messenger started. Whether he should get 
safe through the Indian lines and reach Raw- 
lins — one hundred and sixty-five miles away 

— was a burning question in the little garri- 
son of the corral. During the night the troops 
dug pits for better protection, and brought 
from the creek a supply of water. The next 
day and the following days, the Indians again 
took position on the hill commanding the cor- 
ral, killed the remainder of the animals, and 
fired occasional volleys into the enclosure. 
At sundown the Indians withdrew, to camp on 
lower ground, as the nights were cold. From 
daybreak to dark the pathway from the creek 

— two hundred yards away — was covered by 
the Indian rifles, but was unmolested during 
the night, so that the troops did not suffer for 



98 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

want of water. Thus passed six long days and 
nights in the corral. 

"The messenger was fortunate. He passed 
out unharmed, and by great good luck found 
a stray horse. Procuring remounts at the 
ranches on the way, he arrived at Rawlins 
soon after midnight of September 30th, hav- 
ing covered the distance in but little more than 
twenty-four hours. On the morning of October 
1st, orders for the march were received by 
General Merritt at Fort D. A. Russell. Fort 
Russell is two hundred miles by rail from Raw- 
lins. In the afternoon a train pulled out with 
four companies of the Fifth Cavalry, and 
reached Rawlins at five-thirty next morning. 
Four companies of the Fourth Infantry from 
Fort Sanders had arrived at Rawlins during 
the night. The^work of unloading the train and 
organizing the command occupied until eleven 
A.M., when the march began. Captain Payne's 
messenger acted as our guide. The train con- 
sisted of escort wagons for the Infantry, an 
ambulance, and a few wagons lightly loaded 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 99 

with grain and supplies. About three p.m., 
we stopped and made coffee, and then kept on 
until half-past ten, when we halted for the 
night, forty-two miles from Rawlins. The 
day, like all following days, was warm, and 
the dust stifling. The nights were cold — ice 
forming on standing water. The moon was 
about half full, so that the first hours of the 
night were light. The next morning we started 
at seven o'clock, and at nine-thirty p.m., biv- 
ouacked on Fortification Creek, fifty-eight 
miles farther on the way. The usual alter- 
nation of walking, trotting, and marching on 
foot over the hills, was the order of the day. 
Soon after midday a halt of an hour was made, 
and the horses were unsaddled. As the road 
was good, except in occasional sandy stretches, 
the wagons kept well up with the command 
this day. 

"The following morning, Saturday, Octo- 
ber 4th, we were in the saddle at six o'clock, 
with sixty-five miles between us and Captain 
Payne's Camp, which, it was decided, must be 



loo A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

reached before the next sunrise. At noon we 
arrived at Bear River, and rested for three 
hours. Here we met some settlers who had 
been raided by a war party of Indians, and 
were fleeing for their Hves. In their wagons 
they brought a number of wounded men who 
were in great need of surgical aid. This was 
given them at the expense of the nap which I 
had promised myself while reeling in the saddle 
from sleep. My chief recollection of this halt, 
aside from the wounded settlers, is of a field 
covered with men and horses stretched upon 
the ground as profoundly still as though the 
sleep of Sennacherib's host had fallen upon 
them. 

"At three p.m., we moved on. About sun- 
set we entered the canons, into which the moon 
did not shine until nearly midnight. The road 
was dark and rough, and we soon passed the 
wagons, which had kept on during the halt, 
and saw no more of them until the next day. 
We scarcely halted during the night; not 
more than once or twice for a few minutes to 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE loi 

close up. About five o'clock in the morning 
the guide raised his hand and, pointing to a 
hill dimly outlined in the darkness, — perhaps 
a quarter of a mile away, — said, 'There is 
the hill; and to the left of it was the corral/ 
The column halted, and officer's call was 
sounded, the object being to inform the be- 
sieged that the coming tramp of horses was 
not that of hostile Utes, but of friends and 
comrades, and also to secure, if possible, a 
reply which should indicate the site of the 
camp and give assurance that the garrison still 
held out. Soon an answering call was heard; 
the command then moved on at a gallop, and 
in a few moments reached the beleaguered 
corral. When the character and number of the 
early visitors was known, a weak but thankful 
cry went up ; men tumbled out of the pits and 
ran around in the chill morning, throwing their 
arms wildly and falling on one another's necks, 
showing by every gesture the sudden revulsion 
of feeling. One soldier, who had become pos- 
sessed of a can of preserved peaches, was re- 



102 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

serving them for the last strait, as a priceless 
treasure. As we rode in, he brought up this 
can and wanted to give it to General Merritt. 
The general told him he could eat it himself 
now. The march had been made in just two 
and three quarters days, at an average speed 
of sixty miles per twenty-four hours. 

" But little time was spent at the corral, as 
the enemy had yet to be apprised of our arrival. 
We at once appropriated the position on the 
hill held by the Indians during the daytime. 
Just as the sky was reddening in the east, a 
long line of mounted Indians rose up out of the 
valley about half a mile distant. At the same 
instant they discovered that their vantage- 
ground was taken, and came on in a wild 
charge. The troopers moved out at equal 
speed to meet them. The Indians, however, 
did not wait for the collision, but, firing a few 
shots at long range, scattered into the hills, 
whither no attempt was then made to follow 
them. The casualties of the morning were one 
man and one horse slightly wounded. 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 103 

"About nine o'clock the Infantry came up. 
The Indians then raised a white flag on a 
distant hill, and under it several of the chiefs 
and a white man advanced to hold a parley. 
The burden of their message was, that if the 
white soldiers would go back, they would. 
Having been assured that the white soldiers 
had no intention of going back, the Indians 
concluded to go anyway, and we saw no more 
of them on Milk Creek. 

"The bodies of the dead were brought in 
and buried. That of Major Thornburgh was 
found about five hundred yards from the 
corral. Lying upon the bullet wound in his 
breast was the photograph of Colorow, a Ute 
chief who had thus signed his bloody work. 
All the men were accounted for except one, 
and it was not until the troops moved on to 
White River, a few days later, that his body 
was found, two or three miles beyond Payne's 
camp. His horse had bolted with him, and 
carried him into the enemy's lines, where both 
horse and rider were killed. 



104 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

"It was necessary to move to a new camp- 
ing-ground, as the old one was far from water, 
and the decaying bodies of over three hun- 
dred animals tainted the air. Another site was 
chosen, and the wounded were cared for. I 
had a busy time, having no assistant, except 
the wounded surgeon, who was able, however, 
to administer chloroform. In the evening, 
cheerful camp-fires dotted the valley, the 
soldiers talked, laughed, and smoked, as usual ; 
even the stock jokes between horse and foot 
were overheard — Cavalryman: 'Why do 
they call you dough-boys .f* ' Infantryman: 
'Because we are so much needed when you 
get into trouble.' 'Got a brush and comb.?' 
'No; when we get over and have a brush with 
the Indians, they will fix your hair for you.' 
The horror of the past week remained a mem- 
ory only. Give a rouse for the Cavalry!" 

So ended the after-dinner reminiscence. 

During the next few years — 1879-85 — 
Dr. Kimball was still on the mountain-tops, or 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 105 

on the plains at their feet. Fort Sidney, one 
hundred and sixty miles east of Fort San- 
ders, in Nebraska, became his station in 1881 ; 
there he descended from an altitude of seven 
thousand feet to four thousand. The Indians 
were peaceable for the moment, and the chief 
medical officer found himself, in addition to 
garrison work, a busy doctor in civil life; for 
he had all the surgery up and down the Union 
Pacific Railroad for two hundred miles. As 
this service then included frequent railroad 
accidents and private stabbings, the fees were 
often considerable. 

On one occasion, temporary duty took him 
to Denver and vicinity. Speaking of Idaho 
Springs — then little known as a health re- 
sort — he writes: "I explored this place well, 
and found much of interest, human, animal, 
and mineral — not much vegetable. One speci- 
men interested me much. On the top of Mount 
Seton, ten thousand feet in the air, we found 
a solitary man living in a rude cabin which 
constantly creaked and swayed to and fro in 



io6 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

the ceaseless winds. He had lived there six- 
teen years, digging away in the mountains for 
gold and silver, getting out ore sufficient to 
purchase his simple fare, and expecting every 
day to strike a vein that should make him a 
millionaire. Two cats kept him company, and 
when he returned from his occasional visits to 
town after supplies, the cats would come down 
the mountains to meet him." 

The small routine of garrison life always 
grew tiresome to Dr. Kimball sooner or later. 
He preferred the march and the camp — the 
vivid life of the campaign. Yet he writes to 
his father at this time: "With my books, a few 
congenial persons, a gun, and something to 
shoot, I can be contented anywhere." His 
books and a group of friends he had in every 
garrison. I well remember the officers' whist 
club in the old days. The four men smoked and 
played and supped together with military pre- 
cision once a week. It was a silent, thought- 
ful game, and my husband's keen powers of 
observation and analysis had many opportuni- 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 107 

ties for study of character. He often jotted 
down comments, searching and amusing, after 
a game of whist; thus, without date — "Col- 
onel—a gentleman, but can't play whist; 
Captain — a pig-headed but good-natured 
Dutchman; Captain— (No. 2) — a plump 
toad ; Captain — (No. 3) — of excellent heart, 
but light brain." Here are lieutenants: "Lieu- 
tenant — (No. i) — a gentleman of unusual 
information, a very great talker, and apt to 
be prolix and prosy." (He became a special 
friend.) "Lieutenant — (No. 2) — a recent 
arrival, apparently an inoffensive gentleman, 
running rather more to good clothes than to 

brains. Lieutenant — (No. 3) — and wife 

of large, blundering make, — physically, — 
an infant in common sense, having a wife of 
childish proportions mentally and physically, 
and no health at all — two babes in the wood." 
Dr. Kimball never tolerated gossip, but he did 
thus unburden himself to the pages of his jour- 
nal. "General — a fair player, a man of good 
average ability and a good deal of force and 



io8 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

character. Lieutenant — a good player, good 
ability, fond of good living, and already fat 
and flabby — will die early." 

Most of Dr. Kimball's life was spent far 
away from his old home, yet anniversaries 
and incidents were never overlooked by this 
loyal son and brother. To his sister he writes 
upon her birthday festival: "To do the duty 
that lies nearest is, I believe, the true way of 
life well spent ; and most certainly, in all my 
wanderings, have I nowhere, nor ever, seen 
this duty performed more faithfully, untir- 
ingly, and conscientiously than by you and 
all the circle of the dear old home." To his 
mother, after an illness of hers: "One thought 
comforts me, and that is, that of all the women 
I have ever known or seen, you are the best, 
and that for you, neither sickness, nor death 
itself, can have any terrors. . . . Now, in the 
mature years of my manhood I often look back 
at the temptations through which I have come, 
and appreciate, as I did not at the time, that 
it is the influence of my mother's early teach- 



THE THORNBURGH MASSACRE 109 

ings which guided me. How vividly your fig- 
ure comes before me in those childhood days! 
Father was much away — but we will save 
this to talk over when I come to see you." 

In August, 1883, a letter to his mother an- 
nounces an order to report for duty in New 
York as member of an Army Medical Ex- 
amining Board. So ends this chapter of Indian 
wars and garrison life on the frontier. 



VI 

TEXAS — EUROPE — TEXAS . 

From West Point to Texas — Europe: visits to Rome, 
Florence, Athens, Paris, London — Return to Texas — 
Sick-leave. 

At the conclusion of service on the Examining 
Board in New York, Dr. Kimball was ordered 
to West Point (1884). General Merritt was 
then Superintendent of the Military Academy. 
With him and other congenial friends, the 
whist club flourished, and the peaceful gar- 
rison life moved on agreeably for three years. 
At the end of this "tour" of duty, the sur- 
geon was again found in his familiar longitude 
— at Fort Elliott, Texas. The more formal 
life of the Eastern garrison was, not reluc- 
tantly, exchanged for the freer service on the 
Western plains. The name of Texas sounds 
sad and glad in our family annals. My older 
son can doubtless recall days of illness and 
anxiety at Fort Elliott, and the death of his 



TEXAS 1 1 1 

beloved mother in March, 1890. Two years 
later at Fort Clark, Dr. Kimball suffered, in 
common with many enlisted men, from the 
prevailing epidemic of "Texas Fever," and 
narrowly escaped with his life. As it was in 
Texas, however, that I first "joined" an army 
station, for me the name is linked with the pre- 
cious associations of a newly made home, in 
its deepest and most sacred meaning. 

After a short service in the (then) Indian 
Territory at Fort Supply, Dr. Kimball ob- 
tained six months' leave of absence, with per- 
mission to go "overseas." Our marriage took 
place in 1892, and we sailed at once for Italy. 
To us both it was a promised land. To my 
husband, after the long course of Indian wars 
on the desert, Rome was, indeed, a new life. 
"Rome thrills my very soul," he wrote in his 
journal. Like all travelers, we treasured cer- 
tain "remembered moments." I will recall 
only a few of them. 

We landed at Genoa, and after lingering 
briefly on the Riviera — at Nice and San Remo 



112 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

— we arrived one midnight at Rome. Before 
breakfast the newcomer was abroad and had 
tasted the first delights of the city — city of 
which Emerson wrote: "There is great testi- 
mony of discriminating persons to the effect 
that Rome is endowed with the enchanting 
property of inspiring a longing in men there 
to live and there to die." These words, so full 
of restrained enthusiasm, were no stronger 
than were Dr. Kimball's on his return from 
his walk. 

The rainy March days we spent in the Vati- 
can among Greek marbles and masterpieces of 
painting; as the spring sunshine dawned, we 
walked and drove, from the Forum and the 
Capitoline to St. Peter's and the Catacombs, 
through the labyrinth of ancient and mediaeval 
and modern Rome. One day we were absorbed 
in Romulus and Remus, with memories of the 
Latin reader, the next, lost among emperors, 
popes, and saints; and again, moved by the 
Lenten and Easter services of the Roman 
Church of to-day. Of St. Peter's my husband 



EUROPE 113 

wrote in his brief journal: "Sunday, March 
6th: Visit St. Peter's — another great expe- 
rience. Imposing, but earthly." Like many 
other symbols, at St. Peter's, on Palm Sunday, 
the palms, braided and twisted into fantastic 
shapes, seemed to have lost their old and 
simpler meanings ; but in the basilica of Santa 
Maria Maggiore, the Tenebrce and Miserere^ 
unchanged by usage, were to us the most 
touchingly beautiful of all the services of Holy 
Week. In the late afternoon of Thursday, 
taper after taper was extinguished on the al- 
tar, to typify the passion and death of our 
Lord. At the close of the last psalm, both 
apse and nave were in darkness except for the 
glow of ancient mosaics in the April twilight. 
The moving crowd of many nationalities, 
hushed by the thrilling music, left the church 
in silence. This hour of worship, in a church 
so foreign to all my husband's training, seemed 
to arouse and awaken in him a wealth of deep 
and tender feeling, which had, perhaps, never 
before found words. 



114 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

From Rome we went the usual journey to 
Naples ("Beautiful, dirty Naples," he wrote), 
and thence, by way of Salerno, to Brindisi. 
From that port we sailed by an Italian steamer 
for Greece. On a lovely May morning we 
walked up the Acropolis, and drank deep of 
Hellas, in temple, sea, plain, and mountains. 
Dr. Kimball said, as we walked over historic 
stones and looked between Doric columns into 
the sacred precincts of Pallas Athene, "It is 
like finding old friends." The hard-conned 
lessons of "Old Greek" at Hamilton College 
came back to him then in glorified form; and 
again, when he found that he could read the 
daily newspapers in modern Greek, though the 
spoken tongue was unintelligible. Every step 
in Athens was a wonder and a delight ; and our 
ten days between steamers were all too short. 

The Sumatra carried us through a summer 
sea from Piraeus, around Peloponnesus, among 
Ionian isles, to Brindisi again; thence our 
coastwise steamer sailed up the Adriatic, and 
stopped for commercial errands at Bari, An- 



EUROPE 115 

cona, and, last, at Venice. A few hours at 
each place gave us many interesting glimpses 
of Italian Kfe, a little off the beaten track. 
"No Italian city is without interest," said 
one of our fellow travelers. Finally we were 
promised Venice in the morning. We had 
given orders to be called early, that we might 
see the approach to the city from the lagoons. 
About five o'clock the cabin-boy knocked at 
our door. "II signore Commandante ci an- 
nuncia i lagune " (The Sir Captain announces 
the lagoons), said he. We made haste on deck, 
and saw the lovely Queen of the Adriatic 
from her own domain — pale opal tints on the 
placid waters of the misty lagoons slowly gave 
place to dawning light on the towers and pal- 
aces of Venice. Then followed days when we 
"swam in a gondola," looked at Tintorettos 
and Carpaccios, dreamed in St. Mark's, ate 
ices at Florian's — days that every one knows 
who has visited that city of enchantment. 

Next, Florence: "A city which has never 
been sacked and plundered," wrote my hus- 



ii6 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

band to his sister, "and is, perhaps, the best- 
preserved mediaeval city of Europe. The nar- 
row streets and massive stone buildings give 
a stern and somber air to the place — like its 
heroes, Dante, Savonarola, Michael Angelo, 
Galileo. The Cathedral and other bells are 
this moment ringing vespers, and are the most 
beautiful bells we have heard in Italy." 

After Florence, Paris, with breaks in the 
journey at Milan, Turin, and Geneva. At 
Milan he writes: "Spend all morning in and 
on the wonderful Cathedral, getting my first 
view of the Alps." At Geneva we saw Mont 
Blanc from our hotel window, and at Chamo- 
nix, we walked at the feet of the great White 
Mountain. 

Paris was Paris, of course. Then London, 
with a halt en route at Canterbury. "Walk to 
Cathedral and around town — a thrilling 
sensation I find it — my first touch of England. 
Strange to hear again the English tongue 
spoken by all the world." (From the journal.) 
To his mother he writes from London: "I find 



EUROPE 117 

England fully as interesting, perhaps more so, 
than any other country we have visited." The 
doctor's love of history made the actual " Lon- 
don Stones " a book of absorbing interest. Said 
a friend, a well-known literary woman, upon 
reading one of his letters, "Why, he is a poet !" 
The bells and the music of the cathedrals 
touched him deeply: once at evensong in 
Westminster, where we chanced to hear our 
own Bishop Brooks preach. Of this service 
he wrote to his mother: "It was just in the 
deepening twilight that the eventide hymn 
was sung ('Abide with Me'), and as the last 
strains of the magnificent choir and organ 
rolled through the great dim arches of the glo- 
rious old abbey, one almost caught a glimpse 
of the better world." Another time he wan- 
dered into St. Paul's: "Magnificent music," 
he writes in his notebook. " First, for fifteen 
minutes rang with a crash and a go, St. Paul's 
chimes; then the heavy bell tolled a dozen 
grand, solemn strokes, of which the vibrations, 
as they were slowly dying away through the 



ii8 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

arches, were gathered by the grand organ on 
the same key, and slowly swelled into a volume 
of harmony, filling the vast Cathedral. A good, 
stupid, British sermon followed the beauti- 
ful music. The congregation numbered thou- 
sands/' The following Sunday, at Westminster, 
his comments were not less drastic upon the 
sermon of a distinguished Oxonian: "An in- 
firm old man, who preached three quarters of 
an hour in an unintelligible voice on John 
Wesley." 

In London and in Rome, Dr. Kimball paid 
several visits to military hospitals, and pre- 
sented his letters of introduction to the sur- 
geons in charge. Nor did he neglect a cricket 
match at Lord's or the charms of Rotten 
Row. Of a Sunday meeting in Hyde Park, 
he writes: "Meeting of the great unwashed, 
being addressed by two rampant old-coat ora- 
tors." After a month in London, we made 
brief stops in Oxford, Stratford, and Chester, 
and sailed for New York from Liverpool. One 
of the last jottings in his notebook is this : "We 



TEXAS 119 

grieve over the near end of our journey — 
a long holiday filled with glorious memories. 
Earth has nothing more perfect than have 
been these heavenly weeks." In less than a 
month we had reached our "proper station" 
at Fort Clark, Texas. 

To my husband, arrival at Fort Clark meant 
the usual routine of unpacking and resuming 
official duties in a land already familiar to him. 
To me, Texas and an army garrison were 
strangers; hence, my first impressions were 
novel. When we descended from the train a 
few miles beyond San Antonio, we found 
awaiting us an army ambulance, the usual 
quartermaster's stage on the plains. We fol- 
lowed a sixteenth-century Spanish road across 
twenty-five miles of desert to Fort Clark. The 
limestone ledges, slowly cracking off into jagged 
fragments strewn carelessly about, made the 
almost grassless prairie look like a roughly 
macadamized road. The monotony was em- 
phasized by miles of mesquite trees — the 
" chaparral." The mesquite tree, growing only 



120 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

ten or twelve feet high in orchard-like rows, 
forms a pigmy forest. Its pale olive green and 
prim regularity of growth were at first depress- 
ing to the eye, but I soon learned that the 
mesquite is a blessing to Texas ; its seed-pods 
and gums have an economic value, and its 
tough wood makes excellent fuel. At Las 
Moras ("The Mulberries") our mules left the 
chaparral and descended into an oasis formed 
by one of those strange underground rivers 
which rise on the lofty Staked Plains (Llanos 
Estacados) of Texas. Las Moras had flowed 
for hundreds of miles underground, and here 
. emerged, a noble volume of water fifteen feet 
deep and thirty feet broad. We left our car- 
avan and enjoyed the shade of mulberries, 
pecans, and towering live-oaks ; also the sight 
of water-lilies and plain green grass, with the 
welcome sound of streams. 

Again the white dusty road — here vast 
beds of cactus, there a towering yucca (Span- 
ish bayonet). At the top of a rocky ledge, 
gates opened before us and we entered the 



TEXAS 121 

fort. The bugle was just sounding Retreat, 
and the tempered sunset Hght lent a rosy 
charm to the rather severe and rectangular 
stone quarters. The vine-covered verandas, 
tiny lawns, and trim rows of China trees 
(Pride of India) bespoke careful home-making: 
for these trees were planted in trenches blasted 
out of the solid rock and filled with soil ; the 
grass was a layer of sod placed over the out- 
cropping limestone. 

Since I am recalling first impressions of a 
frontier garrison, I cannot omit the surgeon's 
first notable case, which could hardly have 
occurred elsewhere than in a tropical country. 
It was officially reported "a case of maggots 
in the nose." A soldier had fallen asleep in the 
sun, and during his unconscious half-hour a fly 
peculiar to the tropics deposited its larvae in 
his nostrils. It was only heroic treatment with 
chloroform that destroyed the maggots and 
saved the man from suffocation. 

The days in September were very hot, but 
the starry nights on our balcony were delight- 



122 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

fully cool after nine o'clock when the "Gulf 
breeze" arrives. Promptly as Tattoo is sound- 
ing the cool current from the ocean rushes in 
across a hundred miles of scorching prairie. 
Blinds creak, doors slam, windows rattle, 
the horizon is aglow with heat lightning, 
the earth seems astir and alive again. The 
garrison wakes up, neighbors talk from 
house to house and even exchange visits. A 
blessed gift this sea wind to the nights of 
Texas ! 

Italy, its language and its memories, which 
we daily recalled, soon had to give place to 
other things. Dr. Kimball was absorbed with 
many serious cases of "Texas Fever," which 
proved to be plain typhoid, caused by a con- 
taminated water supply. Finally, he himself 
was stricken, and lingered for weeks between 
life and death. Daily the Hospital Steward 
reported new cases, and repeatedly the fu- 
neral march sounded across the parade ; each 
time I trembled lest it should sound again in 
front of our door. In those days the Red Cross 



TEXAS 123 

army nurse was unknown, and I, who had 
Httle knowledge of sickness, was obliged to 
learn nursing under the tutelage of my patient. 
But my husband's strong constitution won the 
fight at last. In March he was able to travel, 
and received a long sick-leave. He often told 
me that, during those hours of weakness and 
suffering, he saw again — perhaps with a new 
vision — the Italian Madonnas we had learned 
to know so well in the galleries of Europe. 
After two months of illness, while still conva- 
lescent, he wrote to his mother, December 29, 
1892: "Ah, dear mother, how much I thought 
of you in the days when my recovery was un- 
certain — of all you taught me in my child- 
hood; the Saviour whom you taught me to 
know and place my trust in, and whom I found 
a sure comfort in the hour of need." Such 
words are the joy of mothers; happy the one 
who lives long enough to hear them from a 
son who has weathered the questionings and 
temptations of life and come back to her 
simple teachings. 



124 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

We left Texas, went East to New York and 
to Maine, whence, in the following autumn 
(1893), we again "rejoined" at Fort Marcy, 
Santa Fe, New Mexico. 



VII 

NEW MEXICO — SANTA FE 

The old Spanish capital; our Fort Marcy — Cliff dwell- 
ings — Turquoise mines; Indian pueblos — Tesuque, 
Acoma — "Debs Railroad War"; the great strike — 
Troops ordered to Raton to protect tracks and trains — A 
lieutenant captures and runs an engine — End of strike. 

In the City of Santa Fe (City of the Holy 
Faith) we were living in Spanish America. Tra- 
ditions and language are Spanish ; even land- 
scape and climate suggest Spain. In 1893 New 
Mexico was only dreaming of statehood, and 
the old Spanish atmosphere still hung about 
its capital. 

Santa Fe is built around an open plaza of 
which the long, low adobe palace of the Span- 
ish Governors forms one side. Inside the pal- 
ace recent alterations have exposed the conical 
fireplaces and meal bins of an ancient Pueblo 
tribe. The site was doubtless occupied by In- 
dians long before the conquest. The palace 
and plaza mark the end of the Santa Fe Trail, 



126 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

famous in American annals of the nineteenth 
century. From the site of old Fort Marcy we 
could almost hear again the cries of the crowd 
as the long caravan of white wagons descended 
the high mesa into the town; "Los Ameri- 
canos! Loscarros! Lacaravana!" When our 
Fort Marcy band played on the plaza in the 
afternoon, the scene was perhaps not unlike 
that of a century ago. The audience, Ameri- 
cans, Mexicans, and Indians, strolled or lounged 
under the venerable cottonwood trees ; dark- 
eyed Mexican girls, each with a black shawl 
draped over head and shoulders, cigarette- 
smoking youths, Indians with their fagot- 
laden burros, priests and nuns, visitors from 
hotels and sanatorium, shopkeeper and shop- 
pers, all took time to dream and dawdle in 
this land of "poco tiempo." 

We soon found the old capital a delightful 
place to live in. With our two sure-footed 
ponies we rode every day into the hills, explor- 
ing Indian pueblos, turquoise mines, cliff 
dwellings, and the windings of the Rio Grande 







CO 

W 
H 

ni 

«^ 

;^ S 

H 

C/2 
P 

o 



SANTA FE 127 

before it had really become the "Great Wild 
River of the North." We dipped into the 
early Spanish history of Western America, 
and the names of Da Vaca, De Vargas, and 
Coronado became familiar to our ears. We 
entered into the local rivalry as to the "oldest 
house in America," disputed with one at St. 
Augustine, Florida. Near this primitive dwell- 
ing, and of contemporary date, stands the 
little church of San Miguel. The present struc- 
ture, which is not the first, dates from 1630. 

Fort Marcy formed a part of the town itself. 
The quarters were cottages of gray adobe, sur- 
rounded by fields of alfalfa. This is the only 
unfailing green, as grass requires constant irri- 
gation. Hospital and barracks were, of course, 
on the reservation ; and the band-stand on the 
public plaza brought us pleasantly in touch 
with our neighbors of the town. 

The practice march was a recognized in- 
stitution at the Western forts. Here is an 
account of a visit to cliff dwellings, a detour 
from the march proper. The surgeon writes: 



128 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

"We made camp on the Mancos River, at a 
point where the cliffs graciously permit ap- 
proach to their well-guarded treasure. In- 
stead of the brawling mountain stream we had 
looked for after descending a steep canon four 
miles long, we found only water in holes — a 
warm, brownish liquid, bitterly alkaline. One 
man was made so sick by it that he could not 
go on next day. As we found the trail up the 
river in places so narrow, steep, and difficult 
that our pack-mules could not travel it, we 
left mules and baggage and most of our men 
where we had encamped, — a place of no trees 
and no grass, — and went up the river about 
twenty miles, looked at the cliff dwellings, 
took some photographs, and returned. The 
sun was blistering hot, and in the afternoon 
the scorching wind from the desert swirled 
the white dust in our faces. When we reached 
camp, our lips were bleeding, and we were con- 
sumed with thirst — generally desiccated. 
Rio Mancos water on fissured lips and tongue 
was like caustic. But by boiling it and making 




< 
W 

a 

H 

o 

(< 
w 
PL, 

Oh 

g' 



SANTA FE 129 

a weak infusion of tea, it was improved some- 
what ; — we drank what we must and went to 
bed. (No tents.) Mother Nature showed not 
the least solicitude for her children except in 
the beautiful night breeze, which brought a 
dewy coolness to our fevered throats. In the 
morning twilight yesterday, we bade good- 
bye to the Mancos and its shadowy history, 
and moved homeward. . . . Stonewalls do not 
lend themselves kindly to the camera, and 
those wolf-haunted chambers have little to 
offer so long as we know nothing of the life and 
history and folk-lore of the people who once 
lived in them. And so, in our present perspec- 
tive, the journey is bigger than the cliff dwell- 
ings." Yet there is something deeply sugges- 
tive in these ancient, dateless homes. After 
a march like this, to come upon distinctly 
human documents, bits of pottery, ashes, 
bones ! 

A hunting-leave in April proved a series of 
battles with wind, sand, water, cold, and heat. 
A wagon with clothing and equipage sinks in 



130 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

a bottomless creek, horses break loose — al- 
most stampeded by coyotes; but the party 
arrives at the famous Indian pueblo of Acoma. 
Travelers on the Santa Fe Railroad often meet 
some of these Indians with their pottery for 
sale, near Albuquerque. The pueblo is situ- 
ated some miles away, on the top of an almost 
impregnable mesa — the "enchanted mesa." 
The cliffs and canons which lead up to the vil- 
lage are like the ancient Greek fortifications 
near Syracuse, in Sicily, — a labyrinth of 
rocky trails. I quote from my husband's 
notes : — 

"Camp near Acoma, April iSth, 1896: Goz;^r- 
nor Lorenzo Lino visits us at eight a.m., and is 
entertained on hard tack and bacon. We all 
go to the village with him, and are received 
in his mansion [doubtless, one of the cells in 
the pueblo hive]. He wants ten dollars from 
us for the privilege oi doing and photographing 
the town, but compromises on two dollars, 
and I begin with him and staf. The Governor, 
wearing a silk hat, is the chief figure, flanked 




CHILDREN OF ACOMA, N.M. 




THE GOVERNOR AND HIS "STAFF," ACOMA 



SANTA FE 131 

by the Secretary of State and of the Treasury 
— presumably. The cane of ebony carried on 
state occasions, has a silver head, and bears 
the inscription, *A. Lincoln, President U.S. to 
Acoma, 1863.'" One cane was given to each 
of the loyal Indian pueblos at that time, and 
at Acoma it has been preserved as a part of the 
insignia of office. The hat looks as if it might 
bear the same date. 

"Visited pueblo and took pictures. Bell, 
Spanish, in the Acoma church, bears date 
1710. Returned to camp at White Sulphur 
Spring, two p.m. Struck by whirlwind, but 
tent held, except two pegs. Covered with 
sand. 

"Four-thirty p.m. Our tent has been over- 
run with Indians, and at this moment one dirty 
black devil is sitting on the head of my bed 
watching me write. Governor returns visit 
and eats more bacon and hard tack. Rabbits 
and doves here." 

This last is almost the only reference to 
game during the whole leave of a fortnight. 



132 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

Snow, and a blizzard set in, and a stove was 
actually put up in the tent. However, the 
trip brought a variation of garrison monotony 
and proved invigorating. The doctor's health 
steadily improved in this high altitude. 

The even and cheerful life of our garrison 
at Santa Fe was broken in upon by the so- 
called "Debs War" — the great railroad strike 
of 1894. Drill was interrupted one July morn- 
ing by orders to go to Raton, New Mexico, two 
hundred miles eastward, to protect trains. It 
was an adventurous journey from Santa Fe 
to Raton; a few extracts from diary and let- 
ters tell the story: — 

"I am very well, and in camp with about 
two hundred U.S. troops, the Tenth Infantry, 
at Raton, New Mexico, — a town of railroad 
shops, etc., where strikers about one thousand 
strong have stopped and held all trains for a 
week past. About two hundred passengers 
have been living all this time on the cars, with 
scanty food, getting sick and in a wretched 
condition generally. The strikers have burned 





[Sj"'''i 



CHURCH AT ACOMA, BUILT IN 1 7 10 




"NAVAJO CHURCH," ROCK FORMATION NEAR 
FORT WINGATE, N.M. 



SANTA FE 133 

and destroyed much property — a fiendish 
crowd. 

"July 3d, 1894: All goes well to Las Vegas, 
at ten-thirty a.m., when crew desert train. 
Pull out with soldiers in charge. But, whether 
through incompetence of soldiers, or whether 
engine had been tampered with by strikers, no 
water could be injected into boiler, and four 
miles north of Las Vegas we came to a halt, 
about eleven a.m. Worked at machine, getting 
master mechanic from town. At four p.m., 
pitched tents and went into camp. At six p.m., 
the engine reported in order, we broke camp, 
ran three or four miles, — again no water could 
be forced into boilers. Twilight about eight 
P.M., Lieutenant Stokes with ten men volun- 
teered to march back to Las Vegas to secure 
another engine. I spread my blankets down 
on the ground by a telegraph pole and slept — 
slept hard and sound, the sleep of a tired-out 
man, a cool breeze of the prairie fanning face 
and hair. (A broad, grassy plain here, with 
bald, and truly rocky, mountains, in north- 



134 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

west, twenty or thirty miles distant. Great 
herds of sheep.) 

"July 4th : Breakfast, six a.m. — coffee, bread, 
and bacon. Pitch tents. At ten a.m.. Lieuten- 
ant Stokes, who has carried out his mission 
well, returns with locomotive and master me- 
chanic for engineer. [No mean feat for a young- 
ster fresh from West Point.] Strike camp and 
move forward, leaving at first switch our old 
dead locomotive. At Dillon find a wreck of 
coal cars run down a mountain grade of over 
one hundred and fifty minutes to a mile, from 
Blossburg Coal Mines. Track had been greased 
to let our train smash into station at Raton. 
Arrive at Raton at six-thirty p.m., and charge 
on skating-rink — rendezvous for miners and 
storehouse for arms. Found the miners had 
skipped." Ringleaders were arrested, and, 
though crowds continued here and there, all 
trains were soon on their way both east and 
west. When appealed to on behalf of many 
suffering passengers the strike leader tele- 
graphed, "Let not a wheel turn!" With the 



SANTA FE 135 

help of the Army, wheels did turn ; " Have got 
all the passenger trains started," wrote Dr. 
Kimball, "with loaded rifles in the hands of 
disciplined soldiers who are stationed on the 
cow-catchers, in the engine-house, and on the 
car platforms. If interfered with, there will 
be shooting, and it will not be into the air." 
The "war" over, the troops stayed on for 
nearly two months to guard the property and 
preserve peace. It was the season of rains in 
New Mexico. An afternoon thunder-shower 
usually broke over camp about three o'clock 
so that pedestrians were obliged to time 
their trips accordingly. The Colonel and the 
surgeon, however, explored the country North, 
South, East, and West on foot, and greatly 
enjoyed the experience. Evenings were either 
damp or cold, and grew very tiresome towards 
the end. At last, orders were received for re- 
turn to Santa Fe ; thence the doctor proceeded 
eastward for his hard-earned leave. Scarcely 
had he reached Onteora-in-the-Catskills, when 
he received the following telegram: "Fort 



136 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

Marcy abandoned." The result was that he 
had to turn rightabout face, retrace his steps to 
Santa Fe, there make an inventory of hospital 
property, and transfer our household effects 
to a new station — Fort Wingate, New Mex- 
ico. Well do I remember looking out the spot 
which was to be home, and waiting patiently 
at a railroad ticket office for the agent to con- 
sult a map before he could reckon up the fare. 
When I arrived at a lonely station one Octo- 
ber morning at five o'clock, a few miles west 
of the Continental Divide, the desert seemed 
indeed no paradise. My husband said flatly 
in his notebook: "A desolate, windy place. 
Heaven help us out for the year we must spend 
here." Yet we both learned to love our desert, 
and when orders came for the East, it was 
with a secret pang of regret that I heard our 
friends say, " Probably the Major will never 
again serve on the frontier." 



VIII 

NEW MEXICO — FORT WINGATE 

Friendly Indian neighbors; Navajos and Zunis — Their 
customs and industries — Troops ordered to San Juan, 
New Mexico, to protect the Navajos from intruders — 
Camp life — A Mormon church and bishop — Indian and 
Mormon patients — Disastrous fire at Fort Wingate — 
Incident of a practice march; lost in the desert. 

Fort Wingate lies on a vast sandy plain sur- 
rounded on one side by mesas cut by frequent 
canons, and on the other by the towering foot- 
hills of the Rocky Mountains. The vegetation 
is chiefly the piiion (dwarf pine-tree), sage- 
brush, greasewood, and amole, or yucca. From 
the top of the nearest mesa the landscape, 
dotted with bristling pifion trees and broken 
by the jagged walls of rocky caiions, looked 
depressing and repellent. We saw no trace of 
human life except a Santa Fe Railroad train 
vanishing eastward. In the course of two 
years, with the help of our sturdy Indian po- 
nies, much was revealed to us in these caiions, 



138 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

on the plain, and on the mountain-tops. Walk- 
ing in that altitude is laborious, but riding — 
at seven thousand feet above the sea — is ex- 
hilarating. 

We soon discovered our Navajo neighbors, 
their houses hidden away in a canon, or among 
the pinon trees, and from the top of Zuiii 
Mountain, we were but forty miles from the 
Zuiii Pueblo. The Navajos, once notorious 
bandits, are now peaceful shepherds. Their 
blankets, which we found them weaving in the 
woods near their nomad houses, are wonderful 
chronicles of Indian life. The houses (hogdns) 
are merely nests of logs, boughs, and earth, 
a blanket at the opening, and a hole in the top 
for chimney. The Indians were frequent visi- 
tors at the fort, for they soon learned what a 
good market it was for blankets. Our shopping 
was unique ; the venders, man and wife, walked 
silently through the garrison, the squaw carry- 
ing the blanket, and waiting for a summons to 
the verandas. The man spoke only a word or 
two; ^^ Bueno, este buenOy senora''; and with 



FORT WINGATE 139 

stiffly extended fingers — five, seven, or ten 
— told the price in dollars. A certain amount 
of bargaining followed, and the purchase 
ended with the Indian's carefully weighing 
the silver, drawing up his belt, and pointing 
to his mouth. Coffee and meat were then 
served to the group around the kitchen fire. 
In this way we came to know personally our 
Indian neighbors, and through their inter- 
preter, the doctor was often called upon to 
prescribe for them, either at the hospital or in 
the woods. 

While following an obscure trail one winter 
day, we found ourselves at the entrance to 
a hogdn. The occupants were singing in full 
chorus their wild chant, "Yaa-yaa, haio-oh! 
Yaa-yaa, hai-oh !" At the sound of our horses' 
hoofs, the blanket portiere was pushed aside, 
and out trooped men, women, children, and 
dogs. Among them was a white-haired squaw, 
Washi, a venerable Meg Merriles of the tribe. 
She at once recognized the post surgeon, and 
begged "el sefior doctor" to come into the hut 



140 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

and see her grandson, who was dying. The 
Navajo medicine men had done their utmost; 
the sacred chant we had heard had accom- 
pUshed nothing. "Iznaga no wake up — him 
hit with stone — him die; come," she said 
imperiously, brandishing her stick to drive 
away the dogs, as she raised the blanket for 
us to enter. A hot fire that filled the place 
with smoke was blazing in the center of the 
hogdn. On the ground lay the wounded Indian, 
his head bolstered up with skins, his body 
wrapped loosely in a blanket. He was breath- 
ing heavily, in the last stages of a comatose 
condition. A double row of gentle savages — 
at least twenty-five of them — surrounded the 
victim. They sat smoking in silence for some 
time, when suddenly one of the men arose and 
formally addressed the company. With sol- 
emn gesture he pointed to one of the group 
and charged him with having bewitched Iz- 
naga and hindered the cure. "Take off the 
spell," he cried. But the appeal fell unanswered 
when they were told by the "senor doctor" 



FORT WINGATE 141 

that Iznaga must die. "How long him live?" 
they asked, and accepted absolutely the word 
of civilized medicine. The man's skull had 
been fractured two weeks before, and with 
proper treatment he might have been saved. 
Two days later Grandmother Washi came 
wailing to our kitchen door: "Iznaga dead, 
Iznaga dead; me go away — me no stay here 
without Iznaga.'' We expressed our sym- 
pathy — in coffee, sugar, and bacon, which 
she thriftily stuffed into her blanket ; and she 
rode away comforted, with a surviving grand- 
son mounted behind her. According to Washi, 
all the Navajo funeral pomp was observed — 
three horses and one sheep having been killed 
at the last rites. When we visited the hill in 
the spring, we found that the Navajo tradi- 
tions had been strictly followed; the hut in 
which the man died had been burned, and the 
family had vanished. Flowers grew inside the 
neighboring hogdns, and grama grass waved 
over the brush heaps. 
The usual garrison life at Fort Wingate was 



142 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

varied by several practice marches, a hunting- 
leave now and then, and one campaign against 
intruders upon the Navajo Reservation. 

The Zuni Pueblo was only forty miles 
away, and we greatly enjoyed a visit to that 
interesting tribe. The Zufiis being makers of 
pottery, often visited us in the spring to sell 
their winter products. 

One of the most interesting episodes of the 
Wingate Station was the San Juan Expedi- 
tion. I quote from Dr. Kimball's account of 
it, read at a dinner in New York a few years 
later: — 

"Twenty years of my life," he says, "have 
been spent on the central bridge of the conti- 
nent, from Dakota to Texas. The most at- 
tractive and habitable portion of this tract is, 
in my experience. New Mexico, the land of 
* sun, silence and adobe.' Habitable it is though 
not inhabited except for a few towns along 
the lines of railway and in the valley of the 
Rio Grande, a few settlements on the San 
Juan and other small rivers, a few Indian 



FORT WINGATE 143 

pueblos lurking in the canons of its infrequent 
water-courses, and a few straggling Mexican 
villages. But the wide and high tableland is 
for the most part a desert solitude. Prairie 
dogs here and there chatter and whistle at you 
as you pass and a few songless birds fly by with 
noiseless wing. The great plateau stretches 
away for hundreds of miles, with scarce a hu- 
man habitation, and the stillness is so intense 
that the faintest breeze can be heard as it 
comes creeping along the plain stirring the 
dry grass. 

"The Army on the western frontier is inter- 
posed like a buffer between the red men and 
the white men — now called upon to protect 
settlers from Indians, and now Indians from 
settlers. In this case we were called upon to 
protect the red men. One April Day in 1896, 
word came that a party of miners was organ- 
izing in Colorado to invade the Cariso Moun- 
tains, reputed to contain gold, and situated on 
the reservation of the Navajos. The message 
said that troops were needed to keep the min- 



144 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

ers off the reservation and prevent an Indian 
war. For this kind of service our army was 
prepared, and the following day we moved 
out, two troops of cavalry, comfortably 
equipped with tents and bedding, and amply 
supplied with provisions and medical stores. 
The march to the Colorado border was about 
one hundred and twenty-five miles. This por- 
tion of New Mexico lies in the same latitude 
as North Carolina, but the high tablelands, 
five thousand to seven thousand feet above 
the sea, have a very different climate. The 
barren sand waste in April, under the South- 
ern sun, is intensely hot by day, and bitterly 
cold by night. Sand-storms are frequent. 
Water is scarce and strongly alkaline. Grass 
and fuel are found only in occasional oases. 
But for weeks we had not seen a new face, nor 
heard a new story at Fort Wingate, and, tired 
of the monotony, we welcome change even 
though it is to be sought in the desert. 

"On the afternoon of the sixth day of our 
march we descend from the mesa into the 




o 

N 

W « 

Q r 
O S 

Q i 
o ^ 

o 

a 

S 



FORT WINGATE 145 

valley of the Rio San Juan, near the 'Four 
Corners,' — where if you lie down properly 
you can put your head in Utah, your feet in 
New Mexico, one arm in Colorado, and the 
other in Arizona, — the only instance, I be- 
lieve, on our map where four States meet at a 
common point. The San Juan is a tributary of 
the Colorado River. Here were budding Cot- 
tonwood trees, green grass, and water to spare. 
When our thirsty horses caught sight of the 
river's sparkle it was too much for discipline, 
they broke from ranks and made a wild charge 
into the stream. He best appreciates the good 
things of life who knows its hardships, and 
this green vale, which would be only common- 
place in New York State, was to us a veritable 
paradise. We pitched our tents on the grass, 
and soothed our bleared eyes with the restful 
green. The would-be intruders on the Indian 
lands, learning of our presence, abandoned 
their plans and left us to watch and wait. We 
watch the willows and cottonwoods come into 
full leaf, the blooming of the honeysuckles and 



146 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

wild roses, and the nest-building of the robins 
and thrushes, the rise and fall of the river. 

"For society we have the Navajos, and 
across the stream is the Mormon settlement of 
Fruitland. The Indians come for long smokes 
and short talks. Their interest centers chiefly 
in the commissary and the doctor. From the 
commissary department they get sugar and 
coffee, bacon and tobacco, in exchange for 
fresh mutton. To the army surgeon they have 
long been accustomed to bring their serious 
cases of disease or injury. One morning at 
sick-call, after the disabled soldiers had been 
prescribed for, I was not surprised to see an 
Indian come up with his wife. She had a 
broken collar bone which had failed to unite 
under savage surgery, and her arm hung use- 
less at her side. The husband, who spoke a 
little English, said, ^Him bad wife, him no 
work.' The Indian is loyal to his family physi- 
cian, and he went on to explain, as I had often 
heard before, that this was through no fault 
of the Indian doctor, but that a witch of great 



FORT WINGATE 147 

power had thrust her spell into the injured 
limb and made of no avail the best efforts of 
the Navajo medicine man. I promised to do 
the best I could, but said that a cure would 
take time. The husband, as the wife could 
not work, constructed a temporary shelter 
among the willows, where my directions were 
most faithfully carried out. After about three 
weeks the bone had knit, and they were told 
that they could go. The woman smiled on me, 
the man shook hands, and the pair walked 
away toward their hut in the mountain, and I 
supposed the incident closed. But some days 
later, as I was lying under a tree reading, I 
looked up and saw Costiano, the Indian hus- 
band, standing silently before me. As soon 
as he had attracted my attention he held out 
an archaic stone hammer, and in his staccato 
style said: * Aztec hammer. Him good wife. 
Him work.' [No feminine gender in Navajo?] 
And laying the hammer at my feet he turned 
to go. But I called him back, and under the 
genial influence of a pipe he told me howhe had 



148 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

once acted as guide to an exploring party, and 
had then learned how highly the white man 
prizes the relics of the stone age ; accordingly 
he had ridden nearly a hundred miles, to the 
district of the ancient cliff dwellers, to pick 
up his doctor's fee. 

"My practice extended also into the Mor- 
mon settlement, where fees consisted of dona- 
tions of pies and cakes. Fruitland is a village 
which contains about thirty Mormon, and 
four or five Gentile, families. They have found 
a bend of the river where they can readily 
irrigate a few thousand acres of land, and 
have transformed the desert into gardens, 
grain-fields, and fruit-orchards. Scores of 
miles from any market, the coming of the 
troops was hailed with delight by the money- 
less community. A cash market was now at 
their door for corn and oats and hay, for 
bread and meat and laundry work. The or- 
ganization of the Mormon community well fits 
it for the struggle with the wilderness, and 
from Salt Lake, where they settled in 1847, the 








A WATER-CARRIER AT ZUNI 




A NAVAJO WOMAN AT HER LOOM 



FORT WINGATE 149 

Latter Day Saints have spread their settle- 
ments through these mountains along the ridge 
of the continent for more than a thousand 
miles. The Army often comes in contact with 
them, and finds them not vicious outlaws, but 
plodding and useful citizens. 

**Mormonism suggests polygamy, and usu- 
ally I think this is about all it does suggest. 
The village of Fruitland has its bishop, its 
elders and deacons, a Young Men's and a 
Young Women's Mutual Improvement So- 
ciety, and a Relief Society. The church, which 
is also the State, makes every villager an office- 
holder in something, and by this policy secures 
unity of aims and interests. Whiskey and to- 
bacco are forbidden, and there is no saloon in 
Fruitland. Religious services are faithfully at- 
tended by every member of the community. 
One Sunday afternoon, with two or three com- 
rades, I went to church. As soon as we were 
observed, we were hospitably invited to seats 
on the platform, where the uniforms of the 
United States mingled fraternally with the 



150 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

plain frontier dress of bishop and deacons. The 
low adobe building was filled to overflowing. 
Men and women talked freely, and children 
ran back and forth to drink from the water 
pail on the window ledge, until the bishop 
called the assembly to order. After prayer and 
a hymn came the communion service. Bread 
was blessed, and water from the aforesaid pail, 
and young and old partook of the sacrament. 
Though some of the babies could not swallow 
the bread, none were too small to have the 
glass of water put to the lips. The sermon by 
the bishop followed. To his humble, hard- 
worked parishioners in this lonely river- 
reach, his closing words must have been cheer- 
ing indeed: 'The future celestial world,' said 
he, 'will not be in the sun, or moon, or stars, or 
thousands of miles off in space, but it will be 
this world when made pure as glass ; and the 
Latter Day Saints shall inherit it.' What is 
to become of the Gentiles was left us to sur- 
mise. 

*'Amid these surroundings weeks went by, 



FORT WINGATE 151 

and the summer days lengthened, until one 
day orders came for us to march homeward. 
We returned bearing no trophies of war, no 
halo of battle, but we had performed the chief 
duty of a standing army — to prevent war. 
The treaty with the Indians had been kept 
inviolate, and incidentally a poor struggling 
community had been made opulent. 

" Public opinion, in America is inclined to 
frown upon the professional soldier ; he is looked 
upon as an accessory of government, useful 
on occasion, but ordinarily a costly and use- 
less instrument. A strong military power ap- 
pears to be popularly considered a menace to 
liberty and free institutions. So far as my ob- 
servation goes the military spirit tends, not to 
destroy, but to uphold and protect, the free- 
dom of the citizen in all that is consistent with 
good government. The soldier as individual 
and as citizen profits by his military training. 
While his body gains in strength and endur- 
ance, his spirit learns courage, self-sacrifice, 
and obedience. He acquires habits of order, 



152 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

punctuality, attention, and courtesy that are 
invaluable in the arts of peace. 

" But above these civic virtues is the active 
patriotism which the soldier learns, — 'that 
a country 's a thing men should die for at 
need.' No further proof is needed that the 
lesson has been well learned, than the deeds of 
our soldiers on San Juan Hill, and the graves 
they have left behind them in Cuba." 

This picture of a day in camp on the San 
Juan gives a few more details : — 

"May 19, 1896: Breakfast in the bower at 
seven a.m., then hospital [sick-call], which is 
over by eight : — I may say in passing that 
not the smallest of one's cares for the sick in 
the desert lies in seeing that proper food is 
forthcoming. At eight ' Baldy ' comes up ; and 
as he, like all other horses, finds existence with- 
out company unendurable. Trumpeter Jori- 
man comes along, and I start on my morning 
round. This morning I visited a family in 
which there is a sick lady. There was not a 
glass nor an earthen cup, — only a tin can in 



FORT WINGATE 153 

which to mix the fever potion. The house has 
two rooms only and one bed. There are eight 
children, the oldest aged eleven. The baby 
of seven months was cradled in an empty 
box. The mother was born in Boston — has 
the Boston speech. When the eight can be 
left, she goes out to teach some of the neigh- 
boring children, and earns a trifle. The father 
once studied theology at Andover. At present 
I don't think he does much, aside from raising 
children. In fact, the motto of the establish- 
ment seemed, 'Be fruitful and multiply.' In 
the doorway was a hen brooding over a flock 
of newly hatched chickens, and on the floor 
by the baby's box was a cat suckling two 
kittens. 

"Back in camp at ten. Letters arrive at 
eleven. In the afternoon I am going to work 
on the Problem. [These problems, stated by 
the Chief Surgeon of the Department, were 
imaginary camps or marches in New Mexico, 
confronted by imaginary difficulties, to be 
met and solved by the Surgeon in charge.] 



154 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

Dinner at six p.m. and the camp-fire — for the 
evenings are cold — until about nine." 

Wherever he went Dr. Kimball's skill was 
generously used for the sick and suffering — 
Indians, Mormons, ranchmen, cowboys — 
even prairie dogs : — 

"June 25th. Dream under the pines around 
my tent. Hear a squeaking among the cones 
and find a bit of a prairie dog — eyes scarcely 
open. Near by was his dead brother. Appar- 
ently the mother was dead, and the children 
had started out for help. I picked up the little 
squeaker and took it to a hole, into which it 
ran." 

For me the San Juan Expedition was a beau- 
tiful idyl of spring, — written in my husband's 
letters. His story of the homeward march gives 
a picturesque account of the lights and shad- 
ows of New Mexico : — 

"June 23d, 1896: Reveille, four a.m. Break- 
fast over, we — Troop E, Second Cavalry — 
leave camp at five-fifteen a.m. At five-forty- 




VO 

o\ 

00 



< 

O 

o 

in 
O 

u 



FORT WINGATE 155 

five A.M., we have crossed the San Juan and 
commenced march up the hill and across the 
desert. I ride * Baldy ' to Cottonwood — eight- 
een miles, — called * Cottonwood' from two 
trees; trunks at ground two feet apart; as 
they grow up, one leans to east and one to west 
— the only trees for forty miles. No life on 
desert, except brown lizards lying on hot sand 
in sun, running away when disturbed. A 
heavy, sandy road, so that wagons have to be 
drawn downhill. In places not even sagebrush. 
At noon not a breath of air, intensely hot — 
sand burns feet through shoes. At one p.m. a 
hot wind, sirocco-like, then gusts, or whirl- 
winds, lifting a hundred square feet of sand 
in the air and sweeping across the plain. 
Encountered one which nearly buried us; 
from one-thirty p.m., a gale of hot air in 
our faces — wind hot as from a blast fur- 
nace. Arrive at White Sulphur Springs 
three-thirty p.m., thirty-five miles from Fruit- 
land. Violent wind makes us search shelter 
from it, but unsuccessfully. No trees, only 



156 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

rocks. Full moon, uncomfortably bright for 
sleep." 

The next day the troop climbs the foothills 
of Chaska Mountains, and camps among the 
pines — nine thousand feet altitude: "First 
we ride among cedars and pifions brushing our 
hats and faces, then in the shade of the tall 
yellow pines, and at length, at about ten thou- 
sand feet, among quaking aspens. Delightful 
camp here among the pines ; beautiful spring of 
clear, cold water." Thus the march goes on for 
a week, until they reach Fort Defiance, for- 
merly an army post, now an Indian school. 
There the teachers — several ladies — spend the 
evening in camp : what an event to those shut- 
ins! Another troop of the Second Cavalry, 
also in the field, joins the troop here, and to- 
gether they arrive at Fort Wingate. Never shall 
I forget that cloud of dust moving toward us 
across the plain; first a few outriders, then 
wagons, and last, our weather-beaten, travel- 
stained husbands emerged from the cloud. 
But they looked as if campaigning agreed 



FORT WINGATE 157 

with them, and their errand had been worth 
while. 

Scarcely was the routine of garrison life be- 
gun when Officers' Row was startled one June 
afternoon by the fire-call. The fire started in the 
Band Barracks, and as the air was still, we 
did not fear a conflagration ; but the wind rose, 
and in a short time the whole parade ground 
was surrounded by blazing quarters. All the 
barracks, the public buildings, as well as five 
sets of officers' quarters, were destroyed. As 
the fire reached the quarters next us, our friends 
and many enlisted men rushed in, and within a 
few minutes we found ourselves and our house- 
hold goods on the prairie, across an arroyo, 
watching the flames as they approached our 
house. Fortunately at this point the fire was 
stopped, and instead of spending the night on 
the prairie, at six o'clock we began to move 
back. Not so the enlisted men ; they camped 
on the parade ground, cooked their supper 
with planks from the half-burned sidewalk, 
and ate it in jolly mood. 



158 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

Among the experiences of these frontier 
stations is "getting lost." A practice march is 
usually made into the absolute wilderness, and 
in a country with no distinctive landmarks, it 
is very easy to become bewildered. On one of 
these marches, the troops were encamped near 
Fort Apache, New Mexico. One morning a 
young Danish trooper — private Jensen — 
went out hunting with dog and gun. Early in 
the afternoon he prepared to return to camp, 
but, instead of going toward the encampment, 
he went directly away from it. Day after day he 
hunted in vain for a friendly trail. His ammu- 
nition — twenty rounds — was used up. His 
dog disappeared, and he became so weak and 
lame that he could scarcely walk. At first he 
lived on game, then on berries, prickly pears, 
and wild grapes — the last he shared on one 
occasion with a bear. On the ninth day he met 
some Indians, who gave him corn, bread, and 
raw meat ; but either they could not or would 
not understand that he wanted to get back to 
Fort Apache. "I found out afterwards," said 




in 

s 

w 

H 

<; 

:^ 
w 

w 

1— > 
> 



Q 
O 



FORT WINGATE 159 

Jensen, in a quaint account which he gave to 
the surgeon, "that they had reported me as 
soon as they got into Apache — that I was 
out there and could n't get anywhere/' He 
continues : "The eleventh night I stayed at the 
old camp [where he had spent two nights]. 
Next morning I ate the last of the Indian bread, 
and at that time I could eat the meat (raw) too.'' 
At this point the rescue party caught sight of 
the poor fellow; his shoes were worn out, his 
feet wrapped in the lining torn from his blouse. 
Lame and footsore he limped along with a 
crutch that he had made from the branch of 
a tree. "I saw them first and stood still — I 
heard the Lieutenant say, 'Halloo! What have 
we got here? That must be the lost man.'" The 
man had gone about seventy-five miles into 
the wilderness, near Black River. He was so 
weak and dazed that he could scarcely speak, 
but with good hospital care and diet, he soon 
recovered. In telling his story he said : "At 
first I thought I was n't quite lost, but by the 
third day I felt myself lost." When sure 



i6o A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

that he must die, ''I thought most of my 
mother in Denmark/^ said he. When Jensen 
was returned to duty at Fort Wingate, he 
really enjoyed the posing with rags and crutch 
for our camera. I believe a print was sent to 
Jensen's mother in Denmark. 

Two years we spent in the desert. When, in 
1896, we took our last ride, sold our ponies, 
and turned our faces eastward, we were both 
glad and sad. The desert and waste places 
have a charm of their own, a charm which we 
had learned to understand and enjoy. 



IX 

governor's island — THE WAR WITH 
SPAIN 

Duties official and social — Summer Encampment at 
Sea Girt, New Jersey — Declaration of war — Hospital 
enlarged; arrival of wounded — Red Cross nurses — Letters 
to the surgeon — Engrossing and exhausting work. 

There is great fascination about the garrison 
of Governor's Island — a little green oasis in 
the watery waste of New York Harbor. After 
our long absence in the desert, the sights and 
sounds of port and street gave us keen pleasure. 
The Island, with its martial history of nearly 
two centuries, still keeps a flavor of the pastoral 
days when it was known to the Dutch as Not- 
ten Island ("Nut Island"). For a time it was 
merely a pasture, " useful for the grazing of a 
few coach horses and cows for the Governor's 
family." Not until 1755 was the Island garri- 
soned and in Revolutionary days it first became 
a fortified place. In 1809 Fort Columbus was 



i62 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

built, with a true sally-port, drawbridge, moat, 
and glacis, and ten years later. Castle William. 
In our time, twenty years ago, the warlike 
and the homelike were still in evidence. The 
Commanding General's cow grazed peacefully 
among piles of cannon balls (now vanished) ; 
strawberries ripened and roses bloomed, hedged 
about by cast-off guns. A pleached alley of 
willows, skirting the old sea-wall, led to the 
back door of the Island and "Laundress Row." 
Fishermen pitched their tents and cast their 
nets under the shadow of South Battery, and 
found in the Row a ready market for their 
catch. 

The harbor at times was an echo of Broad- 
way itself (a campaign against unnecessary 
noise was then unknown). "Ugly but magni- 
ficent" are the sky-scrapers, so too are the 
traffic boats ; huge liners, bustling tugs, unsav- 
ory barges, gaudy ferryboats, gray men-o'-war, 
fleet yachts, plodding schooners moved past 
our doors day and night. They shrieked, 
warned, threatened, in an endless clamor of 



p J 


— 




.0m -1^^^^ 



THE HARBOR FROM CASTLE WILLIAM 



k + A<!^f3 


1 ^II^ 


9 


' ''^^QRp 


"'s=^^BlBpfe*3i.-'.N 


K 



LITTER DRILL, GOVERNOR'S ISLAND 



GOVERNOR'S ISLAND 163 

bells and whistles. On Sundays, however, the 
noises of the bay died down; we heard the 
church bells of Brooklyn to the east, and the 
solemn note of the ocean bell buoy to the west, 
sounding its "forever-never" of the tides. 

At these headquarters of the Department 
of the East, Dr. Kimball began at once a life 
of unceasing work. His official position was a 
dual one — Assistant to the Chief Surgeon of 
the Department, and Attending Surgeon at 
Fort Columbus (now Fort Jay). The many 
calls upon his time steadily increased, and 
began to weigh heavily upon him. The sudden 
changes of weather, too, the heat and humid- 
ity of summer and the extremes of cold in 
winter, proved very trying to his health, after 
the dry air and high altitudes of the Far West. 

Yet, in spite of constant professional work, 
he found time for occasional social engage- 
ments in the city and on Governor's Island. 
He became President of the Albany Medical 
College Alumni Association, and attended 
various dinners, where he was frequently called 



i64 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

upon to speak. He also wrote from time to 
time, upon request, for the medical journals. 
His article on "Transportation of the Wounded 
in War" (1898) was largely quoted. In the 
records of the Surgeon-General's office may 
be found various communications from Dr. 
Kimball ; a rare " case,'' a new species of flower, 
or the natural history of a site for an army post. 
The first break in the service at Governor's 
Island was the Annual Encampment at Sea- 
girt, New Jersey ( 1 897) . There our troops unite 
with troops of the National Guard in a " prac- 
tice" camp. The Jersey beach, with its lagoons 
and groves, is delightful ; and the comparative 
freedom from care was a boon to the busy 
surgeon. The walk from tent to hotel was one 
morning varied by an incident which recalled 
far-off Yellowstone days. "I have just come 
from breakfast," my husband wrote me, "by 
way of the lily-pond. There a sunburned 
Patrick was wading around picking the blos- 
soms. Presently he came ashore, and bringing 
a bunch of lilies tied up for market, stood erect 



GOVERNOR'S ISLAND 165 

and saluted, then taking off his hat addressed 
me about as follows: 'Would the Major accept 
the flowers from an ould sojer? The Major 
don't know me, but I knows the Major. I 
was a sojer winst. I was in the Troop A of the 
Sivinth Cavalry and the Major was our doctor, 
God bliss him ! And I got a bullet in my shoul- 
der at the Rosebud [the Yellowstone Campaign 
of 1873] and the Major took it out an' your 
honor give me a paper an' I got eight a month 
on it. An' I hope your honor don't think it any 
disgrace in me a-picking the flowers.'" "His 
honor" deeply appreciated Pat's grateful 
memories, kept alive, no doubt, by the "eight 
a month." 

Another time, a deaf old man, a civilian pa- 
tient, — doubtless of the same race as Pat of 
the lily-pond, — bowed himself out of the 
office, saying: "I wish your honor everything 
the world has." "Your honor" was a title 
which belonged instinctively to Dr. Kimball. 

When, in the spring of 1898, war was de- 
clared against Spain, the burden fell with a 



i66 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

double weight upon the surgeon, as it did 
upon all officers of the Regular Army. "Un- 
preparedness" was a word which we learned 
to our sorrow to understand. In the light of the 
great European conflict, the same questions are 
revived to-day. Are we never to profit by our 
own experiences lived through in the Spanish 
War? 

A few reminiscences of that momentous 
summer will perhaps throw light on the sur- 
geon's duties and cares in war. On May 26th 
Dr. Kimball received a telegram from the Sur- 
geon-General, asking if he desired the position 
of Chief Surgeon of an army corps. Since it 
was an offer, not an order, my husband de- 
cided not to accept it. Keenly he foresaw that 
work at home would be as overwhelming a 
necessity as at the front. He was right, for 
only too soon our pretty green island became 
little more than a hospital. 

Every one remembers the Fourth of July, 
1898, and the battle of Santiago. The hot, 
stifling evening brought us spectacular reports 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 167 

of the engagement. A note in the journal 

reads : — 

"July 4, 1898. Receive fuller news of con- 
flict at Santiago — many of our friends among 
the killed and wounded. News of naval battle 
and destruction of Spanish fleet; — little else 
thought or talked of." 

Within a fortnight boat-loads of the wounded 
and fever-stricken began to arrive, including 
our Colonel and many other friends. How to 
house and treat them all was the problem 
which Chief-Surgeon, Post Surgeon, and assist- 
ants had to solve. The capacity of the hos- 
pital was more than doubled by a camp placed 
along the sea-wall. As soon as the wounded 
and the fever patients became convalescent, 
they were given free range of the Island, and 
it was no uncommon sight to meet gaunt 
and crippled men strolling about in pajamas 
all over the grassy ways. 

Oh! the desolation of that summer of 
1898! General Merritt, the Commanding 
General, and his staffs were ordered to the 



i68 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

Philippines, Colonel Worth and his regiment 
to Tampa and to Cuba. Two batteries of 
artillery, the smallest garrison possible, re- 
placed them. At Governor's Island doors 
were closed, verandas empty, grass grew long, 
wistaria, and wigelia and guelder roses blos- 
somed unnoticed; no music, no parades; si- 
lence everywhere except in the Quartermas- 
ter's and the Commissary Departments. For 
a year Governor's Island was the scene of con- 
stant packing and shipping at the wharves; 
loads of hard tack and brooms, rifles and blan- 
kets, litters and ambulances, coffins and flags, 
all went aboard the boats. 

Then, on one April day, came the thud-thud 
of four hundred men (four companies of the 
13 th Infantry) marching aboard our familiar 
boat on their strange journey to the Philip- 
pines. When the last box was loaded and the 
last step taken, a solitary trumpeter faced the 
empty fort and sounded "Assembly" as if to 
search the hollow corners for any left behind. 
We women of the "civilian attaches" saw 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 169 

there the Captain's little daughter, who had 
clung sobbing to her father's hand as he 
marched to the pier; and the invalid wife lying 
bedridden in her silent house across the pa- 
rade; and pale Annie and Anastasia in our 
kitchen, their good-byes to their "friends" 
still on their lips. 

The state of war, then as now, brought a 
great outburst of sympathy and energy from 
all sorts of people. Many were the appeals re- 
ceived by the surgeons from women — some 
absolutely untrained — who begged to be 
taken to the front as nurses. Dr. Kimball had 
always recognized woman's instinct for nurs- 
ing, so that he was quite ready to accept the 
offer of the Red Cross Auxiliary in New York 
to supply a corps of trained nurses for the hos- 
pital at Governor's Island. One case my hus- 
band used to mention as an illustration of how 
a woman nurse could coax her patient back to 
life when a man would utterly fail. A typhoid 
patient (scarcely more than a boy) opened his 
eyes after a prolonged comatose state, and saw 



lyo A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

a kindly woman's face bending over him. He 
thought it was his mother, he afterwards said, 
and then and there began to mend. Mere med- 
icine could never have accomplished the cure. 
The following letter, in reply to one of the 
founders of the Red Cross Auxiliary, of New 
York, shows Dr. Kimball's views: — 

Governor's Island, Nov. 5, 1898. 
Dear Mrs. Cowdin, — 

I greatly regret to learn, by your kind letter 
received to-day, that our associated work has 
come to a close. I can never sufficiently ex- 
press my gratitude for the invaluable assist- 
ance received at your hands during the past 
three months, in the care of the sick and 
wounded under my charge. It has not alone 
been skillful nursing that you have sent to us, 
but a higher tone and better atmosphere, so to 
speak, have come into our wards with the faith- 
ful nurses who have worked so untiringly. 
Miss WyckofI and Miss Barker now seem 
an essential part of the hospital, but we 
are reducing the number of patients — nearly 
all those in the tents have gone — and as soon 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 171 

as a very few sick patients are out of danger, 
we must try to get along without them. . . . 
There is, at present, no way of maintaining 
nurses here, except as you have done, and, 
until other provisions can be made, we must 
get along in the old way. 

With great respect, I remain, 

Very sincerely yours, 

James P. Kimball, 
Major and Surgeon, U,S.A. 

The following note from the President of the 
Auxiliary shows the very cordial relations 
which existed between the ladies of the Red 
Cross Auxiliary and the army surgeon: — 

Dear Major Kimball, — 

I thank you very much for your kind note, 
and all the kind, good things you say about 
the nurses and our Auxiliary. 

I am very proud of having organized and 
started it all and my great regret was that I 
was obliged to be away during the greatest 
work of all. But it was all so well done in my 
absence that I am more than happy. 



172 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

I should indeed be delighted to see the new 
Pavilion and also to have the pleasure of meet- 
ing you, of whom I hear always such lovely 
things said. 
With kind regards, 

Yours sincerely, 

Ellin P. Speyer. 

The army of suffering men brought to the 
surgeon vastly increased professional cares 
and added a thousand petty cares as well. 
Visits from friends, gifts from charitable so- 
cieties, requests from sympathizing commit- 
tees, and countless letters. I have before me a 
pile of these letters addressed to the "Major- 
Doctor" in the summer of 1898, mostly from 
fathers, mothers, sisters, or friends of enlisted 
men. The paper is poor, the spelling often bad, 
but the words are loaded with tears, prayers, 
benedictions, all in one breath. Now it is 
an agonized question, "Dear Major-Doctor, 
where is my boy? Is he ill? Is he not per- 
mitted to write?" Or from a grandmother, 
about her "unhappy grandson": "I entreat 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 173 

you in the name of all you hold dear, to reply 
at once, telling me all about my poor, mis- 
guided boy. . . . The sight of a uniform passing 
my window makes me shrink in shame and 
sorrow, for my boy has disgraced his." And, 
"Oh, dear doctor, thank you, thank you for 
my boy's coat and his purse that you sent me." 
Occasionally the cheerful thanks of the dis- 
charged convalescent : — 

Ocu 5, 1898. 
Maj. J. P. Kimball, 

Dear Sir, — 

I meant to written you before but I got 

to lazy and my time was to precious receiving 

visitors. I arrived home that night at 9.15, 

and felt good after my journey. . . . The first 

day I went out you would think it was a 

monkey and a hand-organ that was traveling 

the streets to see the young lads the way they 

followed me. pThen follow details of health.] 

Thanking you for the kind attention paid 

me in the hospital, I remain. 

Your friend, 

J- J- T . 



174 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

My husband left none of the humble, heart- 
broken appeals unanswered. I can see him 
now, after his exhausting days of work, seated 
evening after evening under the lamp, writ- 
ing these personal letters. (The Government 
made no provision then for a surgeon's secre- 
tary or stenographer.) Most of these letters 
were from friends of the volunteers. 

After the establishment of the camp at Mon- 
tauk, gradually the "missing" from the ranks 
of our own enlisted men began to reappear. 
Our waitress was made happy by the recovery 
and return of her "friend" ; but the cook came 
to me, white and trembling, "Will you ask 
the Major-Doctor if he will please find my 
'fri-end' for me — Anastasia — she — " It 
seemed a hopeless task, but at last " the Ma- 
jor " did succeed. The day of home-coming 
was celebrated by a beefsteak dinner in our 
kitchen, with all the soldier's favorite hors- 
(Tceuvres, 

In the thick of the hurly-burly of war, our 
son Philip "came to this world of ours." The 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 175 

sights and sounds of war viewed from a per- 
ambulator seemed to be of interest to the 
small newcomer, and he grew and throve 
throughout his residence of a year and a half 
in the garrison. 

The strain and labor of the war told upon 
my husband's health, but he held out ably 
until peace was declared. The following win- 
ter (1900) his term of duty expired at Gover- 
nor's Island, and he was promoted to the rank 
of Lieutenant-Colonel. The order making him 
Medical Director of the Military Department 
with headquarters at Omaha, Nebraska, he 
received with great satisfaction. 



X 

THE END 

Promotion (Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel), Medical 
Director of the Department — Omaha, Nebraska — Ill- 
ness; sick-leave — Retirement for disability, April 7 — 
Death at Onteora-in-the-Catskills, April 19, 1902. 

Omaha, a thriving and growing city, was a 
very different station from our last Western 
post. Dr. Kimball's work as Medical Director 
was now almost wholly executive. His office 
was in the Army Building in the heart of the 
business section of the city, and we lived in a 
rented house near one of the small parks. The 
decrease of care was an immense relief, but, true 
doctor that he was, he seemed really to miss 
his lifelong duties in hospital and garrison. 

In the late winter of 1900 he suffered from 
a serious attack of the grippe, and from the 
after-effects of this illness he never recovered. 
The local physicians advised a sick-leave and 
special treatment. In August, 1901, we left 



THE END 177 

Omaha and went directly to our mountain 
home at Onteora-in-the-Cat skills. My hus- 
band, though far from well, declared himself 
much better, and urged on the completion 
of our house, then building. 

The following winter (1902) we spent at 
Garden City, Long Island. In spite of the 
ablest advice and treatment in New York, he 
grew steadily weaker. Like the captain on a 
sinking ship, he saw the lifeboats manned, but 
never hinted to others that he himself was fac- 
ing eternity. Yet, by certain signs afterwards 
recalled, I knew that he was setting his affairs 
in order. He would spend long hours over 
figures, and turn gently to me with a word of 
explanation, "You know how this account is 
kept ?" Or he would tenderly watch the grow- 
ing boy in his little, prankish, baby ways, and 
say, wistfully, "I am so glad you have Philip." 
But no word of complaint or regret ever es- 
caped him. Once, on looking over the diary 
of our European journey, he showed me the 
words: "Seven perfect months/' 



178 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

He read a great deal ; the last volume which 
held his attention was the "Life of General 
McCIellan," by Professor Michie. He walked 
to and from the station nearly every morning, 
and seldom ever rested during the day. His 
most marked pleasure was in the visits from 
our son Cuyler, then a Senior at Yale. The 
college songs and popular airs, which he sang 
with such humor, were always welcomed. 
His father would listen to the jolly words and 
tinkle of the guitar with a half-smile which 
came and went in spite of himself. 

The shadow fell upon us all when we learned 
from consultation with specialists that the 
end was inevitable. In the reverent words 
of Dr. Weir Mitchell: "In God's mercy, the 
disease cannot last long." We played our 
parts — the doctors with their remedies, we 
with our mock cheerfulness, and the patient 
with his indomitable courage. As one of his 
professional friends remarked, "He chose to 
die fighting — like a soldier." My husband 
never appeared as an invalid ; he dressed him- 



THE END 179 

self with care, and to the last, greeted our 
friends and the nurse with his usual grace 
and thoughtfulness. 

In January, 1902, he received his promotion 
to the rank of Colonel, a fact which gave him 
satisfaction, for he feared that his invalidism 
might interfere with the usual evolution in the 
Service. 

As he did not improve, he applied for retire- 
ment. The order to report for examination was 
received on March 29. The following night 
he hardly slept at all. Notwithstanding great 
weakness, he rose early, and when I tried to 
dissuade him from taking the journey, he re- 
plied, "This is an order and must be obeyed." 
He was to report at Governor's Island ; there he 
went through all the formalities unflinchingly. 
Being the only one who could interpret the 
faltering, almost inarticulate speech, I accom- 
panied him. The Secretary of the Board, fol- 
lowing the usual custom, read the medical his- 
tory of the patient. It was a sad story of a long 
battle with disabilities, some of which were ab- 



i8o A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

solutely unknown to his best friends. In silence 
he had borne them in war and in peace. His 
retirement was announced a few days later 
(April 7) the very day when his sick-leave ex- 
pired. The news was received with a long sigh 
of relief, a fact which indicated the profound 
weariness of the body ; for in his normal health, 
never could he have rejoiced in mere idle 
leisure. 

The long term of service was nearly ended. 
We hastened our departure for Onteora, since 
my husband was eager to see the work on our 
cottage, "Buford Lodge," pushed to its end. 
This real human interest in carpentry and ma- 
sonry did undoubtedly sustain him. But the 
nights became exhausting, and at last he con- 
sented to have me telephone to New York for 
a nurse. It was the morning of April 19. She 
arrived by the afternoon train ; in the evening, 
a new home, not the earthly one, had opened 
to him. 

During these last sad nights and days. Dr. 
Kimball seemed perfectly calm and his mind 



THE END 181 

absolutely unclouded, in spite of inexpressible 
suffering. Once, after a desperate experience, 
when the end seemed near, he bade me good- 
bye, saying, "We shall meet in another and 
a better world." But he rallied, with super- 
human courage, and applied his thoughts again 
to our material comfort. He gave some last 
orders about the cottage, he dictated several 
business notes, and signed them with his own 
hand. Then, in the afternoon of the day he 
died, for a few moments we found ourselves 
alone, the boy Philip playing at our feet. Then 
only did I speak openly of death. I confessed 
that the doctor had told me two months before 
that the disease was "without remedy"; that 
since then I had been playing a part for the 
sake of the one I loved best, but that for me the 
skies would never be blue again. He listened, 
true soldier, with the serenity of a strong soul 
who was looking into the future and did not 
quail before its uncertainties. His human 
weakness was dominated by a will powerful, 
yet disciplined by the hardships, sorrows, and 



i82 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

sufferings of life. In that supreme hour his 
thoughts turned to the teachings of his mother. 
As together we looked into the beyond, he 
wrote, for he could scarcely articulate : " I have 
always believed in my mother's teachings in 
religion ; have strayed at times, but never for 
long." These words from a man of science, 
whose whole life had been given to the study 
and practice of medicine, who had read widely 
and thought deeply, are full of meaning. It was 
as if once more he turned to the east and said 
with his last breath, "I believe." I recall, too, 
another bit of testimony to the undercurrent 
of a strong religious life, in this season of phys- 
ical weakness. Hardly two weeks before, he 
walked to the Cathedral at Garden City with 
Philip and myself on Palm Sunday. For weeks 
he had not felt able to go to church, but the 
spirit rose strong above the faltering body and 
would have its part in the divine uplift of the 
worship. My husband had never said much 
of these intimate and sacred experiences, but 
whenever an outlet was given him, he did not 



THE END 183 

let the chance go by. Once it was the pealing 
anthem at St. Paul's in London, once the Tene- 
hrce chants at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, 
once a sermon of Phillips Brooks in West- 
minster Abbey, once the solemn rites of the 
Greek Church in Paris — over and over again 
I remember these rare moments when the 
inner life spoke out. 

The nurse who came to us was one of those 
devoted women who prove their help in a su- 
preme hour. She sat at dinner with us, and 
my husband made her welcome with his fa- 
miliar, happy courtesy. The nurse said after- 
wards that she noticed occasional lapses of 
consciousness, even while we were at table. 
After dinner I went upstairs to oversee the 
preparations for the night, and when I re- 
turned, I met the nurse supporting her patient 
as he slowly mounted the stairs. He had in- 
sisted upon this effort, but it was too much for 
the weakened heart. At the last step he sank 
down exhausted ; and in spite of every means 
used, he was gone. 



i84 A SOLDIER-DOCTOR 

"Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle, or 
who shall rest upon thy holy hill? Even he 
that leadeth an uncorrupt life, and doeth the 
thing which is right and speaketh the truth 
from his heart." 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abraham Lincoln, Fort, 82- 

84. 
Acoma, 125, 130, 131. 
Adobe, 37. 
Albany, 7, 8, 163. 
Albuquerque, 130. 
Alps, 116. 

Ambulance, 16, 69, 70, 119. 
Antelopes, 36, -jz^ 74- 
Apache, 158, 159. 
Appomattox, 22. 
Arizona, 145. 

Army Medical Museum, 60. 
Arrows, 44, 50, 51. 
Assiniboines, 40, 47, 48. 
Athens, 9, no, 114. 
Autobiography, 60, 61. 
Aviation, 59. 

Bad Lands, 49, 70, 74. 
Barrows, S. J., 68, 75, TJ. 
Bells, 117. 
Benton, Fort, 33. 
Big Horn, 36, 72, 80, 82. 
Big Medicine, 58- 
Black Hills, 36, 66, 80. 
Blizzard, 83. 
Boston, I, 153. 
Braden, Lieutenant, 69, 71, 
72. 



Brady, Fort, 80, 84, 86, 87, 

89, 90. 
Brooks, Bishop, 117, 183. 
Brule, logic of, 81. 
Buffalo, 36, 38, 46, 55, 72, 

73- 
Buford, Fort, 32-65. 

Castle William, 162. 

Cathedral, 1 16-18. 

Catskills, 62. 

Cavalry, Second, 94, 156. 

Cavalry, Seventh, 65, 69. 

Chant, sacred, 140. 

Chaparral, 119. 

Cheyennes, 49, 92. 

City Point, ii. 

Civilian attaches, 168. 

Civil War, 11-23. 

Clark, Fort, in, 119. 

Cliff dwellings, 126, 127, 128, 

148. 
Colonel, rank of, 179. 
Colorado, 144, 145. 
Colorow, 103. 
Columbus, Fort, 161, 163. 
Comanches, 49. 
Copper, 90. 
Coronado, 127. 
Council Bluffs, 32. 



i88 



INDEX 



" Coup," 50, 61. 

Courts martial, 62. 

Creoles, 89. 

Crow Chief, 53, 57, 58. 

Cuba, 152, 168. 

Cusick, Lieutenant, 50. 

Custer, General, 64, 65, 69, 

71, 75, 80, 82-85. 
Custer, Mrs., 84, 85. 
Cuyler, Colonel John M., 91. 

Dakota, 32-66, 80-84. 
Dance, 48. 
Danville, 23, 24. 
*'Dead house," 11. 
Debs, 125, 132. 
Delaware, 31. 
Denver, 105. 
Department of the East, 

163. 
Desert, 136, 144, 148, 155. 
Drawings, 160. 

Earthquake, 27, 28. 
Elk, 71. 
Ellis, 2. 

Elliott, Fort, no. 
England, 116, 117. 
Epizootic, 74. 
Ethnology, 46. 
Europe, 70, 116, 123. 

Ferard, Father, 80, 87, 88. 
Fights, 23, 49, 51. 
Fire, prairie, 74, 157. 
Florence, no, 115. 



French, 89. 

Frewen, Lord Morton, 'j'j. 

Fruitland, 146, 148, 149, 155. 

Garden City, 177-83. 
Gardening, 31, 48. 
Genoa, in. 
Governor's Island, 90, 91, 

161, 175. 
Governors, Spanish, 125, 

130, 131. 
Grant, General, 13, 21. 
Great Father, 56, 81. 
Great Spirit, 56. 
Greece, 9, 10, 114. 
Grizzlies, 73. 
Gros Ventres, 40. 
Gunpowder, 40. 

Hamilton College, 21, 1I4. 
Hancock, General, 91. 
Harvard, 2. 
Hatcher's Run, 14, 15, 17, 

19. 
Hogans (houses), 138-41. 
Horses, 13, 33, 34, 40. 
Hunting-leave, 129-32. 
Hyde Park, n8. 
Hygiene, 32. 

Idaho Springs, 105. 
Infantry, 51. 
Infantry, Tenth, 132. 
Infantry, Thirteenth, 168. 
Iowa, 32. 
Ipswich, 2. 



INDEX 



189 



Irrigation, 32, 36, 
Italy, III, 116, 122. 
Ithaca, 5. 

Jay, Fort, 163. 

Jesuit, 80, 88. 
Johnston, 24, 25. 
Journal, 70. 
Judge-Advocate, 62. 

Kearny, Fort Phil, 42. 

Kimball, James P., ancestry, 
1-3; birth, 3; childhood 
and education, 3-10; joins 
the Medical Cadets, 10; at 
Fort Schuyler, 10, II ; 
commissioned Assistant 
Surgeon, 1 1 ; service in the 
Army of the Potomac, 1 1- 
26; journey to the Pacific 
Coast, 27-29; becomes a 
surgeon in the regular 
army, 29, 30; at Fort Del- 
aware, 30; at Fort Buford, 
Dakota, 32-65; marriage, 
64; at Little Rock, 65; on 
the Yellowstone Expedi- 
tion, 65-79; at Fort Ran- 
dall, Dakota, 80-83; ex- 
pedition under Custer, 83- 
86; at Fort Brady, Michi- 
gan, 86-90; at Wilkes- 
Barre, 90; at Governor's 
Island, 90, 91; in the Ute 
War, 92-104; at Fort Sid- 
ney, Nebraska, 105-08; on 



the Army Medical Exam- 
ining Board in New York, 
109; at West Point, no; 
at Fort Elliott, Texas, 1 10; 
at Fort Supply, Indian 
Territory, in; second 
marriage, ii; trip abroad, 
111-18; at Fort Clark, 
Texas, 119-23; at Fort 
Marcy, Santa Fe, 124-36; 
at Fort Wingate, New 
Mexico, 136-60; the San 
Juan Expedition, 142- 
56; at Governor's Island 
again, 1 61-75; caring for 
the sick and wounded in 
the Spanish War, 165- 
75; Medical Director at 
Omaha with rank of Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel, 175, 176; 
sick-leave, 176; Onteora 
and Garden City, 177-83; 
death 180, 183. 

Lagoons, 115. 
Las Moras, 120. 
Las Vegas, 133. 
Latter-Day Saints, 149, 150. 
Lee, General, 8, 19, 22. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 26. 
Litter, new species, 69, 72. 
Little Rock, 65. 
London, no, 118. 
Longfellow, 84. 
Long Roll, 71. 
Lynchburg, 22. 



igo 



INDEX 



Mandans, 39, 40, 53, 58. 

Marcy, Fort, 124-27, 136. 

Marquette, Father, 88. 

Massacre, 92, 95. 

McClellan, General, 178. 

McDougall Hospital, 10. 

Medal, 56. 

Medicine man, 56, 147. 

Meeker, 95. 

Merritt, General, 94, 98, 102, 

no, 167. 
Mesa, 130, 137. 
Mesquite, 119, 120. 
Mess-table, 76. 
Michie, Professor, 178. 
Michigan, 84, 86, 90. 
Milan, 116. 
Miners, 134, 143. 
Missionary, 87. 
Missouri River, 32-36, 61, 

66. 
Montana, 33, 38. 
Montauk, 174. 
Mormon, bishop and church, 

137, 148, 149, 154. 
Mules, escaped, 74. 
Music, 117, 118. 
Mussel Shell River, 67, 73. 

Naples, 114. 
National Guard, 164. 
Navajos, 137, 138, 141-43, 

146. 
Nebraska, 80, 92, 105, 175, 

176. 
Negroes, 26. 



New Jersey, 161. 
New Mexico, 124-60. 
North Carolina, 24. 
North, Edward, 9. 
Northern Pacific Railroad, 

64, 79. 
Northwest Fur Company, 

38, 179- 
Nurse, Army, 123, 169, 170, 
180, 183. 

Ogallalahs, 49. 
Ojibway language, 88. 
Omaha, 175-77. 
Onteora-in-the-Catskills, 1 3 5, 
176, 177, 180. 

Panama, 27. 
Paris, no, 116. 
Patriotism, 152. 
Peace, 19, 26, 48, 152. 
Pennsylvania, 20, 90. 
Petersburg, 12, 15, 21, 23. 
Philippines, 168. 
Photographs, 10, 128. 
Polygamy, 149. 
Pompey's Pillar, 67, 72. 
Porter, Admiral, 21. 
Potomac, 8, 26, 32. 
Powder River, 66. 
Preparedness, 70, 144. 
Pueblos, 125, 126, 131, 143. 

Raid, 81. 
Railroad, 13, 58. 
Ranches, 35, 154. 



INDEX 



191 



Raton, 132, 134. 

Rawlins, 95, 97, 98, 99. 

Red Cross, 122, 170, 171. 

Red Stone, 52. 

" Relations," Jesuit, 87. 

Religion, 182. 

Rice, Fort, 41. 

Rio Grande, 126, 142. 

Riots, 90. 

Rocky Mountains, 93, 137. 

Rome, 110-12, 114, 118. 

St. Louis, 32. 

St. Paul, 83. 

St. Peter's, 112, 113. 

Salt Lake, 148. 

San Antonio, 119. 

Sanders, Fort, 92, 98, 105. 

Sand-storms, 144, 155. 

San Francisco, 27. 

San Juan, 142, 145, 152, 154, 

155. 
Santa Fe, 124, 125, 132, 135, 

136. 
Santa Fe Railroad, 137. 
Santa Maria Maggiore, 113, 

183. 
Santiago, battle of, 166, 167. 
Sault Ste. Marie, 80, 84, 89, 

90. 
Schuyler, Fort, 10, 11. 
Scouts, 37. 
Sea Girt, 164. 

Sheridan, General, 14, 23, 24. 
Sherman, General, 19. 
Shipwreck, 28. 



Shopping, 138. 
Sidney, Fort, 92, 105. 
Sioux, 38, 40, 43, 47, 49, 60, 

61, 69, 'j']^ 80, 81, 86. 
Sioux City, 33, 35. 
Sitting Bull, 27, 42, 44, 60. 
Sons, 91. 
Spain, 3, 165. 
Sports, 61. 
Staked Plains, 120. 
Stampeding, 49. 
Stanley, General, 64, 65, 70, 

71. 
Stevenson, Fort, 84. 
Stockade, 37, 44, 62. 
Stokes, Lieutenant, 133, 134. 
Strike, 125, 132, 133. 
Sully, Fort, 66. 

Tampa, 168. 
Teal, 74. 
Temples, 10. 
Tenderfoot, 32. 
Tepees, 47. 

Terry, General, 64, 65, 83. 
Texas, no, 119-23. 
Thornburgh, Major, 94-103. 
Tobacco, 40. 

"Tours" of duty, 91, no. 
Traders, 55. 

"Transportation of Wound- 
ed in War," 164. 
Transports, 10. 
Treaty, 151. 
Tuberculosis, 53. 
Typhoid, 122. 



192 



INDEX 



Union, Fort, 38, 39, 40, 42. 

Utah, 145. 

Ute, 92, 93, 95, loi, 103. 

Vatican, 112, 
Venice, 115. 
Virginia, 17, 22, 23. 
Virginia City, 28. 
Volunteers, 8, 174. 
Volunteers, One Hundred 

Twenty-first New York, 

8, II, 23,26. 
Volunteers, Sixty-fifth New 

York, 23, 26, 27. 
Voyage, 28. 

War of 1812, 2, 3. 

War with Spain, 165-75. 



Washi, 139, 141. 
Washington, 26, 81. 
Water supply, 122. 
Welsh, 2. 

West Point, 75, no, 134. 
Westminster, 117, 183. 
Whiskey, 39, 40, 70. 
Whist, 106, 107. 
White River, 94. 
Wigwam, 57. 
Wingate, Fort, 136-60. 
Wolves, 71, 74. 
Wyoming, 92. 

Yellowstone Expedition, 65- 
79. 

Zufiis, 137, 138, 142. 



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